


The Warriors of Stank

by AKoai



Category: Final Fantasy I
Genre: Cross-Posted on deviantArt, Crystals, Female Warriors of Light, chronic motion sickness, firaga spamming, i'm not taking this seriously anyway, major profanity is censored out, periodic angst, phoenix down allergies, repeated character deaths, thank god for phoenix down, too lazy to have this beta-read, warrior of light semi-OCs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 71,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKoai/pseuds/AKoai
Summary: The adventures of amateur adventurers somehow chosen by fate who battle personal baggage, chronic motion sickness, too many monsters, constant death, allergies and an empty wallet to become the Warriors of Light.
Kudos: 2





	1. Prologue

_The stench of monster, blood, sweat and fire swirled around Ash. The left side of her armor had been clawed off and her shield lay chipped and warped off to the side. The smoke rising from both the monster and the patches of fire from Gluten’s last Flare was thick in her eyes and nose, making her lightheaded.  
She glanced around frantically for her friends. Gluten was sprawled face-down, dead, over a downed column, her hat drooping over her face. Ariella crawled slowly across the ground towards Gluten, white light gathering in her hands as she prepared to cast Life. Kai was nowhere to be seen.  
A loud roar from the monster had Ash whipping back around. Chaos spread his wings and threw his head back, and a rain of monster fluids fell on the party as he wheeled around the ruins once and headed straight for Ariella. Ash scrambled to her feet and grabbed her sword, limping towards the white wizard as fast as possible. She couldn’t let Ariella die. Not when literally nobody else in the party could learn Life or ever bothered to stock up on phoenix down before coming to the battle....  
A flash of red streaked by as Kai appeared from nowhere, drop-kicking Chaos across the ruins by his face. The monster roared in pain as he was propelled into the wall. Ash sighed in relief as Kai landed gracefully in front of Ariella and Gluten, who was starting to come to under Ariella’s hands. She pulled a potion out of her pocket and tossed it to Ash, who broke the bottle over her head. A cool sensation washed over her as her wounds healed.  
Across the ruins, Chaos pulled himself free from the wall, snarling. Kai, Ash and Ariella all looked at each other worriedly. Gluten waved her arms pitifully and moaned.  
“He should go down soon,” Kai called out to Ash. “We’ve been beating at him for ages now. If Gluten weren’t still down we could finish this now.”  
“Well, ‘scuse me,” Gluten coughed, voice slurring as she tried to prop herself up. She immediately toppled over and a wound somewhere burst open, showering herself, Ariella and Kai in a mini-fountain of blood.  
Ariella smacked her and pulled out a potion. “Stay down while I fix this!”  
Chaos roared and reared up. All four warriors flinched and gripped their weapons tighter.  
Ash lifted her sword. “Ari, cast Protera. Gluten, as soon as you’re with us I want you to cast the nukes. Kai, back me up. We’re taking him down.”  
Ariella summoned golden light in her hands and cast it upwards, enveloping the party. “Protera, cast!”  
Gluten weakly raised a hand, darkness and sparks swirling at her fingertips. “Flare loaded, firing on command.”  
Kai nodded and readied her sword. “On your count. Let’s take this sucker down!”  
Chaos leapt at them, claws and wings extended. Ash pulled down her face guard. “Now!”  
She and Kai launched themselves up, meeting Chaos in mid-air. They flew past his claws, Kai’s mask catching and tearing away and Ash’s other shoulder-guard following with a hollow clang, to land heavy slashes on his face and one of his shoulders. Chaos screeched in pain and Ash turned to look back over her shoulder. “Gluten, now!”  
Explosions rocked the ruins and bloomed all around Chaos, bringing down surrounding columns and chunks of ceiling as well. Chaos howled as one especially large piece struck him square in the back, knocking him directly into the biggest blast. It expanded in a mushroom cloud of smoke, dust and flames and burned Ash’s face and retinas until all she could see and feel was searing white as she free-fell towards the ground in slow motion._

“...up. Hey, it’s almost noon already, wake up.”  
Ash blinked as the blurry image of Ariella came into view. The white mage hovered over her with a steaming mug in hand. She was already wearing her white-and-red robe and had her staff in hand.  
“Finally, you’re awake,” she said. She handed Ash the mug of what smelled like tea. “Gluten and Kai are already waiting in the lobby.”  
Ash blinked again and felt around her. She slowly took in the soft bed, the wood ceiling, and the voices chattering from behind the door. The Cornelia Inn.  
“I had the weirdest dream last night,” she mumbled as she slurped her tea and felt around for her gear. “We were in some kind of ruins fighting this really big monster with wings and horns or something. I think Gluten was dead and Kai was a ninja or something like that and we were all really banged up. Oh, but you brought Gluten back to life and she started throwing nukes at the monster and stuff…”  
“That sounds like fun,” Ariella replied and handed Ash her bag. “Hopefully this whole saving the world thing doesn’t end like that. Let’s get going. I think Gluten’s getting hungry.”  
A short black mage and a slender thief sat waiting in the lobby and stood as the other two came in. The black mage, Gluten, ran over with a brochure in hand. “Morning, you two. So I know we’re in a bit of a rush to head towards Pravoka, but would you mind if we stopped to eat first? There’s a delish-looking bacon and eggs platter at this restaurant down the street and I’ve been dying to go while we’re here.”  
“We were supposed to leave an hour ago,” Kai said. “If we leave now, we can still make it before nightfall. Gluten, there’s jerky in the bag, you can eat that until we get there. Good sleep, Ash?”  
“Yeah, the bed was nice,” Ash replied. “Is it really that late already?”  
Kai nodded, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Yup. Don’t worry, Gluten and Ariella just woke up too. The rooms here are really nice.”  
“If we’re short on time we should get going,” Ariella said. “We should grab a bite before we go, though.”  
Ash shrugged. “Sounds good to me. Okay, you all have your crystals, right?”  
They all nodded and held out their hands. The crystals glowed, blue, emerald, crimson, and gold in their palms. These crystals were what had summoned them from their corners of the world to meet each other in Cornelia, and were said to herald the coming of the Four Warriors of Light. Always, they had prayed for the Warriors to come as they watched the seas rage, the winds fall silent, the earth decay, and unexplained fires start up around the world. Never, though, had they thought it might be them.  
“This is weird,” Kai murmured first. “I always thought the Warriors of Light would be some over-powered super-knights from someplace or other.”  
“I still think the crystals chose wrong,” Gluten muttered. “At least, mine has terrible judgement.”  
“Do you think we can live up to this?” Ariella wondered out loud. “I mean, saving the world’s kind of a big deal.”  
“Well, whether we think we can or not, the crystals chose us,” Ash said, putting her crystal in her pocket. “We’re the Warriors of Light now. The whole world is counting on us.”  
“No pressure or anything,” Gluten muttered, tucking hers back into her sleeve. “We don’t even know what we’re supposed to be doing.”  
Kai stuffed hers into her bag and headed for the door. “Well, we should probably get going if we want to catch breakfast before we have to go.”  
Ariella slipped hers into her robe collar and followed her. “Where is this restaurant, anyway? If we want to eat before we really have to leave, then we should go now.”  
“I hope the food’s cheap,” Gluten piped up. “The rooms here are nice but I literally have five gil left after one night.”  
“How? The rate here isn’t even that much!”  
“Hey, I forgot my wallet when I left home okay?”  
“So you fight monsters and loot their bodies!”  
“Okay, first of all that’s disgusting. Second of all, magic takes up mana points so there’s only so many times I’m allowed to nuke monsters…”  
“Don’t worry about it, I can spot you. Food here can’t be _that_ expensive…”


	2. Cornelia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party face their first foe: skyrocketing food prices. Meanwhile, the king of Cornelia searches for the prophecied Warriors of Light.

Food was that expensive.  
Kai internally cringed as she almost emptied her wallet to pay for her portion of the tab. She’d had to kill a lot of monsters for that gold, and had hoped it would last her a long time. Now she was watching weeks of saving devoured in a single meal.  
They’d tried to find another restaurant. They really tried. Ariella and Ash had even made a point of flagging down the waiter to ask if there was somewhere cheaper in town. According to him, severe livestock shortages paired by increasingly dismal produce and grain harvests over the years had completely killed the food industry everywhere on the west side of the Aldean Sea. This one was the only restaurant of any kind left, kept afloat by tourists to Cornelia, ridiculous prices to counter the cost of operation, and the fact that tourists were more than willing to pay up for pre-cooked food in an area that had no edible monsters.  
Gluten kept trying to push her loose change on Ash to help pay for her portion. To her credit, Gluten had tried to be cheap and only ordered one baked potato before calling it a morning, but even that was insanely priced. Something about root vegetables being especially short, the waiter had said. Eventually Ash had to push Gluten over by her face and quickly pay while she was recovering to shut her up.  
“We haven’t even bought gear or provisions yet,” Ariella grumbled, counting her change back into her wallet. “Luckily medicinal plants aren’t affected by the crop shortages. We could probably get two or three potions for emergencies.”  
“My armor’s falling apart though,” Ash pointed out, picking at a frayed strap. “I don’t think your Cure or the potions will do much good if the monsters out there can easily run me through with a sword.”  
Kai motioned at her ragged tunic and completely worn down dagger. “If anyone needs new gear, it’s me.”  
“You can just dodge. You’re a thief.”  
“You think being a thief means I have a hundred-percent dodge rate? I’ve been cut up more times than I can count, and armor could’ve helped a lot.”  
“That’s what the potions and Cure is for. We can sew Ash’s armor back together and it’ll hold until we get to Pravoka. We. Need. Potions.”  
“Two potions does not an emergency kit make, Ariella. Preventative measures are where it’s at, and that’s armor.”  
“We don’t have enough money to get both though, so we kind of have to pick and choose, Ash.”  
“I have an idea.”  
Everyone turned to look at Gluten. She reached into her sleeve and pulled out her crystal. Her dot eyes narrowed sadly. “I knew from the start I wasn’t cut out to be a Warrior of Light. I can’t save the world. I couldn’t even save my own village from dying. I brought this with me from my village to remind me of my vow to become strong enough to avenge everyone. A sort of keepsake, if you will. But we’re short on cash, everything’s expensive, and this shiny rock is worth a lot.”  
“Gluten,” Ash, Kai and Ariella all said. “No.”  
She sighed and sniffled, completely ignoring them. “Maybe this is a sign. My family’s telling me to let go. Forget the village. Start a new life for myself. Yeah, that sounds like something they would want.” She gave one final sniff and turned to look down the street towards the item shop with new purpose. “I’m sorry, new friends. Our journey together ends before it’s even begun. I’m going to go pawn this, then we can split the money. You’ll have your armor and potions, and I’ll take what I need to get myself to the next town.”  
She took a deep breath and started down the street, crystal in hand. She didn’t make it very far before Ash grabbed her by her hood and yanked her back. Ariella and Kai each grabbed one of her arms and tried to wrestle the crystal away.  
“You are not selling that, Gluten!” Ash snapped. “Don’t you realize how important that is? That was the sign your village gave you! That you’re worthy of becoming a Warrior of Light! Not whatever you just said!”  
“Oh, but it is!” Gluten wailed and thrashed, smacking Kai in the nose. Kai hissed in pain and let go to stem the new nosebleed, doubling over. “I’m with three of the destined Warriors and they’re strapped for cash. What better way to speed them on their way than to sponsor their journey? If we sell this you can have both armor and potions!”  
“Forget the potions,” Ariella snapped and snatched at Gluten’s fist. “That shiny rock you’re holding? Way more important! We need that to save the world, and we can’t do it if you sell it.”  
“You also can’t save the world if you don’t have good armor and plenty of emergency supplies,” Gluten pointed out.  
Ash shrugged. “She does have a point.”  
Ariella glared at her. “It’s not a valid one.”  
Ash loosened her grip a little as she turned to argue with Ariella, and Gluten took the chance to run for it. Ariella yelped as she was pulled off balance. Ash tried to grab Gluten’s hood again and narrowly brushed it as the black mage wiggled away. She took off down the street, still clutching her crystal. Ash ran after her, yelling. “Oi! Get back here!”  
Kai finally managed to stand up, still blinking away reflexive tears. She took off after Ash and Gluten, leaving Ariella where she sat. She took off up a stack of boxes as she pulled up ahead of Ash and alongside Gluten, leaping off of the top one and tackling Gluten from above just as Ash caught up and rammed into her from behind. Gluten wheezed as they hit the ground and her fist opened on impact, sending the crystal flying away. She wheezed harder. “Noooo!”  
Kai rolled over and slid to catch it before it hit the ground. “Got it!” She held it up triumphantly, spitting blood out of her mouth. “No more crystals for you, Gluten!”  
There was a loud gasp and a clatter behind Kai. She turned around to see a guard staring at her, wide-eyed and pointing. The polearm he’d probably been holding rolled around at his feet.  
“Oh my!”  
Ash waved from where she was pinning Gluten to the ground. “Hi.”  
“[CENSORED],” said Gluten. “The police are here.”  
Kai saluted awkwardly.  
The guard quickly collected himself and picked up his polearm. “You three! You must come with me at once!”  
“Why?” Kai said. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”  
“I don’t think he cares,” Gluten mumbled. “What if he has an arrest quota he needs to meet and we’re the last three people?”  
“I must take you to the palace immediately,” said the guard, composure mostly regained. “Quickly!”  
“Sir, with all due respect, we’re really sorry for the commotion but we’re just trying to stop a friend from doing something she’s going to regret doing,” Ash tried to explain.  
“Hey!”  
Ariella jogged up, panting and angry. “You guys can’t just leave me by myself like that! Gluten, what the actual hell. You know just as well as the rest of us how important that crystal is. It’s not something you could just sell! Listen, if we need money, we can just fight and loot some of the monsters around Cornelia, and we will be just fine. Selling your crystal would do more harm than good, and it’s a really stupid idea. And look, you even got the police involved.”  
She planted her hands on her hips and glared at the guard. “What do you want?”  
The guard cleared his throat and straightened himself up. “The king is searching for the prophesied Warriors of Light. It is said that they would come bearing crystals like the one you have there. Would I be right to assume…?”  
Ash, Kai and Ariella all looked at each other, then pulled out their own crystals. Gluten propped herself up on one elbow and pointed at Kai. “The yellow one’s mine.”  
The guard’s eyes widened. “Yes! Th-those crystals! You must see the king at once!”  
Without another word, he grabbed Kai and Ariella by the arms and marched them back the way they came. Ariella yelped indignantly and tried to pry his hands off. “Hey, stop! Ash, help!”  
“Let go of my friends!” Ash shouted after the guard, running after them and dragging Gluten along on the ground.  
Gluten let out a guttural choke. “Stop pulling my collar, please.”

Less than an hour later, they found themselves in a dusty, bruised pile at the feet of the king. Ash had scratches on her face from grappling Gluten, and several more straps had come loose. The front of Ariella’s robe was caked in mud. Gluten’s hat had been torn in several places and her backside was streaked with dirt as well. Kai’s nose hadn’t stopped bleeding, and she was stuck making a sticky red mess of herself and the carpet in front of her until it was. The fact that the king of Cornelia sat before them in all his well-dressed, shiny, perfume-smelling glory made her feel worse. The chancellor wasn’t helping either as he threw them the not-so-occasional disapproving glance.  
The king gave them a once-over and pretended they didn’t look like they’d been run over by a carriage. “Welcome, travelers,” he said in a clear, calm voice. “I am told you carry crystals. Is this true?”  
Everyone looked at each other, then pulled out their crystals together. They sparkled, blue, emerald, crimson, and gold, and the chancellor gasped.  
The king’s eyes flashed, and he nodded. “It’s just as Lukahn’s prophecy foretold: ‘When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come,’” he recited. “It appears the time has finally come, as you four stand before me now.”  
The chancellor shuffled closer to the throne and bent toward the king. “Your Majesty, we cannot be certain that these are the warriors foretold by the prophecy. I simply mean…” He motioned to the four suggestively.  
Gluten made to scoff a reply and Kai and Ariella both clapped a hand over her mouth. “Shhh!”  
“And yet,” the king replied softly to the chancellor, “they stand before us with the crystals. I cannot dismiss this as mere coincidence.”  
He turned back to the four. “Crystal bearers, there is a task I would ask of you.”  
Kai and Ariella pressed harder on Gluten’s mouth as she mumbled out what was probably a smart reply. Ash glared at them to be quiet and cleared her throat. “And what would that be, Your Majesty?”  
The king took on a much more somber air as he leaned forward on his throne. “Will you not rescue my daughter, Sarah?”  
Gluten blinked. Ash and Kai looked at each other and the king, confused. Ariella cleared her throat. “Your Majesty, I thought the princess never left the palace. Shouldn’t she be safe here?”  
“That is a bit of a strange request, considering,” Kai agreed. “You’d think with all the guards, Cornelia Castle would be the most secure place in the town.”  
“Unless they just lost the princess,” Gluten said. “This is why you don’t build big buildings. You end up losing damsels in them and then you become--”  
“I think this level of distress is caused by more than just losing the princess somewhere in the palace,” Ash interrupted. “Your Majesty, would you please explain why the princess needs rescuing?”  
The king nodded to the chancellor, who cleared his throat. “Garland, a knight once in His Majesty’s service, has abducted Princess Sarah,” he explained. “I ask for your aid in the name of His Majesty, the king of Cornelia.”  
Gluten gave a cough that sounded suspiciously like “background checks,” which everyone else ignored.  
“Garland has taken refuge in the Chaos Shrine, which lies to our north,” the chancellor continued. “Of course, we did try to rescue the princess ourselves…” He hung his head, and the king closed his eyes somberly. “...But Garland is the finest swordsman in the kingdom. We have none who can match him. We have lost many great knights to the rescue campaign already.”  
Ash beckoned the other three closer. “What do you guys think? I think they really could use the help, but if we’re fighting this Garland guy for them we need to do it together.”  
“Nope,” Gluten said immediately. “Did you hear what the chancellor just said? Garland’s swordsmanship really is no joke. Even people from my hometown knew about him, and we were cut off from literally everything. If he could beat several experienced knights in a row, what’re four amateur adventurers with crappy gear going to do?”  
“And what about the princess, then?” Ariella asked. “She’s alone with a scary guy with a sword, and her family’s obviously worried sick. We can’t just leave like it’s nothing.”  
“I agree with that,” Kai said, “but like Gluten said, we don’t have experience or good gear. If Garland’s as strong as he sounds, we’re going to be in huge trouble fighting him.”  
“Couldn’t you just sneak in and get the princess out? You’re a thief.”  
“Yeah, I pick pockets, I’m not that great with burglary yet. I'm also not great at reverse kidnapping."  
“Okay,” Ash said, “regardless of gear and experience, I still think we should try. There’s four of us, and we have Ariella to heal and Gluten to cast black magic. With that alone, I think we can last a lot longer than a party of just guards will. We’ve also got some experience from fighting monsters, right? Let’s just think of Garland as a giant goblin that’s really good at swordsmanship.”  
“And also has armor,” Gluten piped in. “and is way more coordinated than a goblin. And has a bigass sword instead of a knife. Experience against goblins does not good battle experience make, Ash.”  
“Gluten, you’re being really unhelpful right now,” Ariella sighed. “Battle experience is still battle experience. It’s not like we’re going in completely wet behind the ears. Plus, as the supposed Warriors of Light, aren’t we supposed to be saving the world?”  
“Yes, apparently we are,” Gluten snapped. “But if we rescue a kidnapped princess from a super-knight when we can barely get through a group of goblins, not only is it going to sidetrack us from our quest, it’s going to stop us dead in its tracks. Literally dead. You know what would be actually helpful? Going north, getting a boat, and tracking down someone who can tell us exactly what we’re supposed to do to save the world.”  
“You wish to journey to the continent to our north.”  
Gluten yelped and turned around to face the throne. Ash looked up at the king and nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty. We were hoping to get a ferry from Pravoka to the south-eastern continent. We heard something about a group of sages, and were hoping to learn about the prophecy of the Warriors of Light from them.”  
“I see.” The king thought for a moment. “The bridge leading north was lost long ago, making passage impossible. However, if you can rescue Sarah, I will have the bridge rebuilt as a sign of my gratitude.”  
Ariella gasped. Gluten’s dot-eyes dilated. Kai whistled and nodded to herself. Ash smiled. “You would do that for us, Your Majesty?”  
The king smiled back and nodded. “You are the Warriors of Light, who have come as foretold by the prophecy, and Sarah is my precious daughter, for whom no prize is too great. Between you, I would not think to refuse.”  
The four glanced at each other, then nodded in unison. “We’ll give it our all, Your Majesty,” Ash assured him.”  
The king’s smile widened, and even the chancellor cracked a grin. “Those are welcome words,” the king replied. “Go now, Warriors of Light, and do not fail me!”  
The four saluted, and headed for the hall. Kai stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back at the throne, thinking.  
Ariella looked behind her. “Hey, Kai. Come on. The princess is waiting.”  
“Gimme one second,” Kai said and jogged back to the throne room. The king and the chancellor were whispering amongst themselves, but looked up as she reentered. “Yes?”  
“With all due respect, rebuilding the bridge for us is something we can never be grateful enough for,” Kai started, “but Your Majesty, there’s actually another issue that we need resolved. See, we all came to Cornelia with limited money, and between the inn fee and crazy food prices, we don’t have enough to get better gear or provisions…”

“I know the king’ll do anything to get his daughter back, but I didn’t think he’d convince the shop owners to give us brand new stuff for free.”  
Ariella sorted through her bag to make room for the new bottles. “I guess it’s not just the king that wants her back. Princess Sarah’s a beloved figure and a household name in Cornelia. The people probably want her home safe just as much as her father does.”  
Ash shrugged out of her destroyed leather armor and let Kai drape a new set over her. “I guess. We’re going to have to thank him when we get back.”  
Gluten came muttering around the corner, scribbling something in her spellbook. Kai finished strapping Ash into her armor and turned around to get help with hers. “What’re you writing there?”  
“New spell,” Gluten said. “The mage at the black magic shop gave me a whole lecture on elements and how I can’t just use Fire for everything.” She closed her book and shrugged. “Thunder sounds cool, though. Now I can nuke and fry stuff.”  
“And you didn’t even have to sell your crystal for it,” Ariella said. "Not only that, we can head north after this. Turns out rescuing a kidnapped princess from a super-knight does help us with our quest, hmm?"  
Gluten glared and threw her book at her. "Oh shut up."  
Ariella dodged and beckoned to Kai. "Let me see your nose. Hopefully the bandages stopped the bleeding, so I can reset it if need be before we go fight Garland."  
Kai nodded and sat down next to Ariella. She winced as the white mage pulled the cloth plugging her nostrils out and poked her nose gently, then bundled up the bandages to throw away later. “It doesn’t look broken, so you probably just burst a vessel or something. I can heal it up real quick before we head out.”  
She pulled out a potion bottle and dabbed some up Kai’s nostril with a fresh bandage. Kai winced and blinked as her eyes watered. “What do they put in this? It stings.”  
Ariella shrugged and stuffed the rest of the potion back in her bag. “Tea tree oil, probably.”  
Ash slung her bag over her shoulder and strapped on her shiny new sword. “Now that we have our gear and provisions and still have Gluten’s crystal, ready to go?”  
The other three nodded. Kai wiped the leftover potion in her nose with her sleeve and hopped up. “Let’s go take this sucker down!”


	3. Princesses and Prophecies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party fight Garland, rescue a princess, and get a bridge built.

The goblin screeched as it tried to beat out the flames licking across its body. Gluten stepped aside as it collapsed, still blazing, in front of her. She wiped her sweaty forehead with her robe and readjusted her hat.  
On the other side of the clearing, Kai hurled a knife into the back of the last fleeing goblin. It fell, wailing, and Kai immediately fell upon it, patting down the body before it had completely stopped moving and shoving any gil she found into her pockets. Gluten wrinkled her nose and Kai shrugged. “How else will we afford stuff?”  
Ariella secured her hammer across her back and knelt to dig through her bag. “Any injuries? Cuts? Bruises? Burns from Gluten?”  
“I don’t think so,” Ash said. She sat down and wiped the monster blood off of her sword before resheathing it. “The new weapons really help. Hopefully they stay sharp until we get to the Chaos Shrine.”  
“Where is that, actually?” Kai called over from another goblin corpse. “The chancellor just said to head north, but he didn’t tell us anything else.”  
“You’d think they’d at least mark it on a map for us,” Gluten muttered. “Or at bare minimum, give us a map at all.”  
“Well, buildings are far and few between outside of Cornelia,” Ariella pointed out, “and I highly doubt they’d put the Chaos Shrine in a cave. We should just keep heading north until we run into something that looks like a castle or shrine or something like that.”  
“We better find it soon,” Gluten said. “I’m running out of mana points and I’m useless without Fire.”  
“Just hit stuff with your staff then,” Ariella suggested. “We’ll rest up and get you some ethers once we get to Pravoka. It sucks that they don’t sell any in Cornelia.”  
Kai tossed a bag of coins to Ash from across the clearing. “Area looks clear. I think I see a break in the treeline up in that direction. We should try looking over there.”  
Ash nodded, and she and Gluten helped Ariella back up. “Let’s get going then.”  
Soon, they were stepping out of the forest and back into the hot afternoon sun. Gluten blinked furiously and rubbed her eyes against the sudden brightness and looked around her, squinting. “Anyone see a shrine or castle anywhere?”  
“Nope,” Ash said.  
Gluten’s vision cleared and she groaned. There was nothing in front of them but mountains, marshland, and more trees.  
“We’re headed in the right direction, right?” Ariella asked. “There’s not like a secret passage we have to go through to get to the Chaos Shrine or anything?”  
“I don’t think so,” Ash mumbled. “Cornelia’s about as south as you can get on the peninsula, and the only way we can go until the bridge is rebuilt is north-west. This has to be the right direction.”  
“You said that an hour ago,” Gluten muttered as they began trudging through the marsh. “And the hour before that. And maybe the hour before that. And are we any closer? I don’t think so. We’ve been walking in circles and killing goblins for half the day and we haven’t gotten any closer. I’m starting to wonder if there even is a Chaos Shrine to begin with. Are we sure that the princess hasn’t just accidentally locked herself in a storage closet somewhere in the palace? It’s a really big building. You couldn’t search the whole thing in a week if you tried. I’ll bet you she’s been sitting in some dusty room with a bunch of cleaning supplies, waiting for her janitor in grubby shorts to...”  
She trailed off and looked around her. She was out of the marsh, but Ash, Kai and Ariella were nowhere to be seen. “Guys?”  
Nobody answered except for the birds in the trees. Gluten plopped down on a nearby log and huffed. “Great. They left me behind.”  
Her stomach growled. Sighing, she reached into her bag and pulled out half of her baked potato she’d saved from breakfast. She’d been meaning to have it for dinner, but a bite or two now wouldn’t hurt. Even if it was a cold potato, she had to smile a little as she nibbled on the cut end. It’d been over a decade since she’d had a good potato like this. Before she knew it, she’d eaten most of it.  
“They’re probably still going north,” Gluten muttered to herself. She wrapped the rest of her potato back up and stood, brushing herself off. “I should go back to Cornelia and tell someone just in case they don’t come back.”  
A low growl behind her had the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up. Gluten slowly turned to look. A bright, sinister pair of eyes were trained on her from behind a tree. Gluten caught a glimpse of the wolf’s yellow-and-tan coat, then took off screaming.  
She tore through the forest, leaping over roots and rocks with adrenaline-fueled ease until she cleared the last of the trees. She slowed to a stop and collapsed face-first into the ground, panting. Her lungs burned as she heaved and her legs felt like they’d been liquified. Staying still had never felt so good. She closed her eyes and kept panting for air.  
A light blow to the bottom of her boot had her sitting straight up and screaming again until she saw the three people standing in front of her. She waved sheepishly. “Oh, there you are.”  
Kai and Ariella tried really hard not to laugh. Ash reached down to help Gluten up and straightened her hat for her. “You caught up to us fast.”  
“You left me behind!” Gluten cried. “You all just walked off without me! I was in the forest alone and almost got eaten alive! How did you even lose me like that? I thought we were supposed to stick together!”  
“Sorry for not putting you on a leash,” Ariella muttered in between giggles.  
“You were the one who walked off in the wrong direction,” Kai said. “We tried calling you but you were long gone. Ash said you’d find us eventually, so we weren’t too worried.”  
Gluten just cried.  
Ash patted her back. “There, there,” she said. “We found each other, and nobody’s dead yet. There’s still a few hours of light left, so we should keep going. We should at least get as far as we can north. There’s only so much continent land left to search.”  
“I don’t think we’ll have to look far,” Kai said and pointed. They all looked to see a castle, half-caved in and overgrown with vines in the distance. “If that’s not it, I don’t know what is.”  
“Great!” Ariella let out a breath of relief. “I was getting worried about how much longer the provisions would last us.”  
“Let’s get going then,” Ash said and pulled her helmet on. “We’ve got a princess to rescue.”

The sun was just starting to set by the time they reached the castle. They all wrinkled their noses at the stench of mold and something decaying that wafted out.  
Ariella pressed her sleeve against her nose. “I think I’m going to throw up.”  
“Don’t do it yet,” Ash said. “Save it for Garland.”  
She drew her sword and motioned for everyone to do the same. One by one, they slipped in through the open doorway. Gluten’s eyes watered as the smell got several times stronger. Ahead of her, Ash tripped on a vine trailing from the ceiling across the floor, startling a colony of bats and sending them flying. Gluten ducked as they flapped and chirped indignantly over her head.  
“We should explore a little first,” Ariella suggested. “There might be some useful items we could use or places we could hide and regroup if the fight goes south.”  
Kai nodded. “That’s a good idea. We don’t know the layout of the Shrine the way Garland probably does. Looking around might even the playing field a little.”  
Gluten shook her head. “I really don’t like the idea of staying in here. There’s bats and guano and I’m pretty sure there were eyes following us somewhere back down the hall. Also, do we even know where Garland is? What if he knew we were coming and ambushes us? Then what would we do?”  
“We don’t have to worry about that,” Kai assured her. She pointed down the hall to a set of doors. From inside, they all could hear sinister laughing. “Unless there’s another monster here that the king and the chancellor didn’t warn us about, that has to be him there.”  
“Perfect,” Ash said. “We didn’t even have to look for him.”  
She started marching for the door. Kai held out an arm to stop her. “Wait. We should just listen and watch first. We don’t know if he has the princess with him or not. If he does, we can’t just barge in and take him on. We don’t know what he would do with her.”  
She sheathed her sword and padded lightly towards the door, and Ash followed as quietly as possible. Gluten tried to turn back, but Ariella grabbed her and dragged her along, muffling her cries of protest with her hand.  
Kai and Ash each stood to one side of the door. Ariella dragged Gluten to one side, and Gluten shook her off indignantly and rolled up her sleeves. Kai pushed the door open a crack, moving slowly to avoid any squeaking. They all leaned forward to listen as Garland spoke.  
“How foolish of them to think that they could beat me,” Garland was gloating. His voice echoed in a way that made them all shiver. “Nearly a hundred knights were sent, and still, I remain undefeated. The king will have no choice but to exchange the kingdom for his daughter’s life. Cornelia will be mine!”  
The four locked eyes and nodded. Ash and Kai drew their swords and kicked the doors open. The room was lit with torches lined up high on the walls. Ranks of gargoyles stared them down, their jeweled eyes glowering and their stone wings casting long shadows across the floor. Garland stood before them in full armor and a heavy purple cloak clipped to his shoulders. He towered over even Ash, and the long horns on his helmet made Gluten think of devil. At his feet laid an unconscious green-haired maiden. Her beautiful face was streaked with tears and her clothes, hair and arms were stained with mildew and mud.  
Garland whirled around, his red eyes flashing menacingly and his sword glinting in the dim light of the torches on the wall. “Who’s there!?”  
Ash brandished her sword at him. “In the name of the king of Cornelia and the four Crystals, we demand that you release Princess Sarah!”  
“Hmph,” Garland scoffed. “The king’s lapdogs. Do you have any idea who you’re messing with?”  
Before Kai could stop her, Ash ran at Garland, roaring. Garland easily parried her blow with his scabbard and swept her off her feet, sending her sliding across the floor into Ariella. Gluten leapt to help them. “Ah! Guys!”  
Kai readied her sword and stood protectively in front of the other three. “You’ve caused Cornelia grief for long enough, Garland. We’re going to put an end to you and everything you’ve done, here and now!”  
Behind her, Ash had recovered and stood back up, only a little bruised. Ariella and Gluten pulled out their spellbooks and summoned balls of white light and blazing fire respectively.  
Garland let out a booming, heartstopping laugh. “You really think you have what it takes to cross swords with ME? Very well…”  
He drew his blade with a flourish. Gluten swore she saw a glimpse of a grin through his faceguard. “I, Garland, will knock you all down!!”  
He took a swing at the group. Kai leapt to the side while Ash tumbled backwards, taking Ariella with her and knocking Gluten to one side. Gluten rebuilt her fireball and hurled it at Garland. “Fire!”  
Garland dodged to the side and the fireball grazed his shoulder plating. Kai took advantage of the distraction to land a flurry of blows across his thigh, spinning across the floor on her knees to escape the slash that followed. “Ariella! Get the princess! Ash, guard her please!”  
“On it!” Ariella ran towards the center of the room with Ash close behind. Garland swung around, dragging his sword in an arc. The tip caught Ariella’s ankle and she tripped. Ash narrowly avoided both the blade and Ariella and brought her sword up to block Garland’s follow-up. The knight bore down on her, forcing the blade closer to her face. She grunted with the effort of pushing back. “Gluten!”  
Gluten hurled a knife at Garland’s head. He ducked to dodge, and the motion took pressure off of Ash long enough for her to sweep his blade to the side, grab Ariella, and run for the girl. Ariella wasted no time in casting Protect over her, and she and Ash carried her to safety behind a statue. From the side, Kai took a running leap at him and slashed. She landed and rolled, and Garland’s shoulder plate clattered after her, straps cut clean. She grinned triumphantly. “Heavy armor’s hard to move in and easy to cut off, didn’t you know?”  
Garland replied by smacking her with the flat of his blade. Kai toppled over like a toy soldier. She recovered quickly and rolled to the side as Garland brought his sword down where she’d been lying. She tried to slash at him in retaliation, and Garland grabbed her sword and threw her across the room. She flattened as she hit the wall and tumbled to the floor. A line of blood trickled out of her mouth as she coughed and wheezed.  
Garland stalked towards her, sword turning to glint in the light. Kai sat up, dazed. Gluten readied another fireball and prepared to throw it. Before she could, Ash slid in behind him, slicing at the small, unguarded bit of flesh at the back of Garland’s knees.  
The knight stumbled and spun around, knocking Ash to the ground. The edge of his blade cut deep into her thigh through the chain mail in a shower of red. Ash cried out as she fell. Garland raised his sword again, prepared to cut her down.  
“Fire!”  
The fireball ripped through the air and hit Garland square in the face and exploded. He roared in pain and stumbled backwards away from Ash, sparing her, and turned to glare at Gluten. His faceguard had melted away and his eyes, now unobstructed by a faceguard, glowed with fury.  
Gluten sighed. “Oh, [CENSORED].”  
Garland leapt at her, sword pulled back and ready to strike Gluten’s head clean off. Gluten closed her eyes and braced herself for impact. This was it. This was the end. Her three companions would continue on without her and find another person who would actually be worthy of the crystal. She was going to die here, an unknown black mage from the middle of nowhere, without seeing any of the wide world that she’d always dreamed of traveling.  
“Gluten!”  
A rock hit Gluten square in the side of the head, knocking her down just as Garland’s sword swung past, slicing her hat clean in two but not touching her person. Gluten’s eyes flew open, and she blinked around her. A blurry image of Ariella had stood up from behind the statue and was pointing at her. “Protect!”  
A shell of golden light formed around Gluten just in time for Garland’s next blow. His sword managed to cut into her shoulder, deep enough to draw blood and make Gluten tear up, before the shell repelled him, sending him reeling away. Gluten shook her head to clear her vision and stumbled to Ariella. “Give me some potions.”  
Ariella shoved the items into Gluten’s hands. They sprang apart as Garland’s sword came down from above with enough force to split the ground where they’d been standing. Gluten plunged her staff into the hole in his helmet as hard as she could. Garland roared and grabbed the staff, ripping it out of Gluten’s hands as he reeled and shook his head, spraying blood everywhere as he tried to pull the staff out. Gluten took the chance to run for Ash and Kai, quickly chugging a potion as she went. She tossed two more to the two sword fighters as she got closer. “Heal up!”  
Ash broke the bottle over her thigh and Kai downed half of it and poured the rest of it over her head, both sighing in relief as their wounds healed. The three stood up, totally renewed. Garland had yanked Gluten’s staff out and was glowering at a terrified Ariella, who stood shakily but determined in front of the unconscious girl.  
“Hey, Garland!” Ash shouted. Garland turned around and Gluten threw the remains of her potato at him. It bounced off of his helmet and splatted against the ground. Garland blinked. Kai and Ariella face-palmed. Ash groaned. “You couldn’t throw something a little more destructive? Like a fireball?”  
“I’m low on mana points,” Gluten explained. “I’m saving it.”  
Kai picked up her sword and ran. “Not the time, Gluten!”  
She motioned to Ash, who nodded and ran from the other side. The two charged at Garland, swords ready. Garland swept at them, and Kai vaulted and rolled over his sword while Ash parried it into a nearby statue. She managed to slice through one of Garland’s horns and kick in the rest of his face guard before he reached up and grabbed her by the throat. Kai gasped and dropped her sword to claw at Garland’s huge hand.  
Ariella summoned a ball of white light and threw it. “Dia!”  
It hit the ceiling and broke into a blinding shower, but otherwise did nothing. She cursed and picked up Kai’s sword to attack Garland, stumbling at the weight of it. Garland kicked her aside easily.  
Ash was sweating with the effort of keeping Garland’s sword pinned. He’d already managed to pull it out of the statue and was dragging it across the floor, Ash barely holding on with her blade wedged into the handle. “Gluten, now would be a good time!”  
“Fine!” Gluten concentrated on summoning the biggest fireball she could and raised it with both hands above her head. Ash nodded in approval and Gluten screamed. “Fire!”  
She hurled the ball at Garland. It hit him square in the chest, staggering him and forcing him to let go of Kai to catch himself. She fell to the floor, wheezing, and grabbed her sword. Garland didn’t let go of his sword, and the sudden force of him falling pulled it from the ground, knocking Ash free. Gluten tripped and fell forward, tipping the remains of her hat back and pushing herself up on her elbows so that she could see.  
Ariella stood, a little dazed but otherwise alright. She rubbed her hands until they glowed and laid them across Kai’s neck. “By the power of the Crystals, I declare you cured!”  
The bruised handprint around Kai’s neck faded quickly and Kai let out an eased breath. She nodded to Ariella. “Thanks.”  
Ash had stood back up and tapped Kai’s shoulder before running. “Let’s go! High and low!”  
Kai nodded and ran after her. Garland swung and Ash ducked. Kai leapt forward onto her back and used the momentum from Ash standing up to launch herself towards Garland’s head. She kicked his head back and stabbed down into his neck from the hole where the faceguard had been while Ash stabbed up under his tacet and chain mail, both girls burying their swords up to the hilt.  
For a moment Garland stood still, as if paralyzed. He didn’t move, even as Gluten got up and approached him warily, spellbook raised in preparation to hit him. Then Kai kicked off of his chest to land safely, and he fell backwards in slow motion and crashed into the ground. Blood pooled behind his head and gushed from under his tacet, and he twitched. The four watched as the life drained from him and his eyes faded from bright red into darkness.  
Kai and Ash retrieved their swords to clean them and Ariella fell back on her heels, sighing in relief. “That was both much easier and much harder than it would be.”  
“It had its moments,” Ash said and resheathed her sword. “We came out of it alive though. That’s what matters.”  
“Guys,” Kai exclaimed, shaking her head in disbelief. “We defeated Garland. Holy Crystals, we beat the strongest swordsman in Cornelia!”  
Everyone cheered. Gluten clung to Ariella and cried in relief. Ash and Kai did a victory dance off and whooped.  
Ariella patted Gluten’s head softly and placed the cut half of her hat back in place. “We should heal up before we head back for Cornelia. We still need to bring the princess home.”  
“The princess!”  
Gluten immediately detached herself from Ariella and raced to the girl’s side, the other three close behind. They knelt around her as Ariella gently reached out and shook her. “Miss? Are you alright?”  
The girl’s eyes slowly opened, and she blinked drowsily up at the four. “Oh… You… you’ve come to rescue me?”  
“The king sent us,” Ash explained, helping her sit up. “Everyone’s beyond worried. Don’t worry, we took care of Garland. He won’t hurt you now.”  
“I don’t know how I can ever thank you,” the girl murmured. “I am Sarah, princess of Cornelia.”  
She glanced over at Garland’s body and her eyes widened. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever defeated Garland,” she gasped. “You must allow me to show my gratitude. Please, accompany me to Castle Cornelia.”  
She tried to stand up, and wobbled. Ariella immediately pulled her back down gently and handed her a potion. “Don’t move too much right now. You’ve been unconscious for a while, I take it? It’s probably best not to move too quickly.”  
Sarah nodded and accepted the potion.  
Ash looked around, then closed the doors to the chamber. “I know we’re probably all keen to get out of here, but it’s the middle of the night. In our state, we don’t stand a chance against monsters, especially in the dark. We should stay here until morning and heal up a little.”  
“That’s a good idea,” Ariella agreed. “Once everyone’s rested up and the sun’s out, we can get going back to Cornelia.”  
Kai carefully went back to pat down Garland’s body. Gluten wrinkled her nose. “Do you have no respect for the dead?”  
“I do,” Kai said as she unclipped Garland’s scabbard and sheathed his sword. She tossed a wallet to Ash. “Just not the ones that try to kill us and terrorize the rest of humanity.”

It was much easier going back to Cornelia from the Chaos Shrine than it was the other way around.  
By afternoon the next day, the four were standing in front of the king once more. Sarah ran up to the throne and collapsed in her father’s arms, both of them crying in relief. The chancellor couldn’t hold back his tears either. Ash, Kai, Ariella and Gluten had to try really hard not to cry with them.  
“Thank you for returning my daughter to my side,” the king said once he’d composed himself. “Now, I am truly convinced. There can be no doubt that you are the Warriors of Light from Lukahn’s prophecy!”  
“Excuse me, Your Majesty,” Kai said, “would you mind explaining this prophecy to us? Ash and I heard snippets about the Warriors of Light and the Crystals in our hometowns across the ocean, but we don’t know a whole lot beyond that. Ariella’s from Crescent Lake and studied with the sages themselves, and even she doesn’t know all the details, and Gluten didn’t know anything at all until we met her.”  
“Is that so?” The king raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You should hear the prophecy in its entirety then. Ahem. If I may…”  
He glanced at the chancellor, who promptly handed him a small roll of paper. The king nodded in thanks and unrolled it. “‘When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come,” he read. “‘If they cannot gather the shards of light, the darkness will consume all. The four Crystals will never shine again…’”  
He rolled the paper back up. Ash furrowed her brows. “Is that all?”  
“Wow,” Gluten muttered to herself. “Dark.”  
Ariella quickly shushed her.  
“So we’re supposed to restore the Crystals?” Kai asked. “Seems like a big task.”  
“Even if we are the prophesied Warriors of Light,” Ash said, “we can’t do that. We don’t even know where the Crystals are. How are we supposed to restore them if we don’t even know where to start?”  
“I hear that a Crystal can be found on the continent to our west,” the king said. “The paths through the mountains were deemed unsafe and closed years ago, but perhaps you can find a way there by sea if you head north. Beware that the monsters are more vicious there. Restoring light to the Crystals is our only hope of ridding the world of the monsters which plague it!”  
“West,” Gluten murmured. “That’ll be near Melmond then.”  
“I will have the bridge to the north rebuilt, as I promised,” continued the king. “I pray that you succeed in storing light to the four Crystals--and to the world.”  
Sarah approached the four with a beautifully carved lute. “This lute has been entrusted to the princesses of Cornelia for generations,” she said. “When Garland abducted me, he took this lute as well. I want you to have it. It may aid you in your journey.”  
Ash took it carefully. “Thank you so much, Your Highness. We’ll take good care of it.”  
Sarah smiled and took her place again next to the king. The king stood, and the four companions bowed. “Now go forth, Warriors of Light, and save the world!”

“At least we know how to save the world now,” Ariella mused as she and Gluten strolled through the town.  
They had a week before the bridge would be usable, so they were taking the time to rest and restock their provisions. Ash and Kai had run off to the armor and weapon shops to have their equipment mended, so the mages were left to explore.  
Gluten kicked a pebble and sighed. “I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t have to head west, though. The earth there is actually terrible, and the monsters are ten times worse than they are here. We wouldn’t last a minute there.”  
“Looks like we don’t have too much of a choice, though,” Ariella said. “If our job is to restore the Crystals, we have to go where the Crystals are. We’re the Warriors of Light, and we have a purpose to fulfill.”  
Gluten groaned. “I totally should’ve pawned off my crystal when I had the chance.”

Workers buzzed around in an organized mess. Hammers and nails chimed, saws rumbled, and voices shouted in rhythm as logs and planks were lifted through the air.  
A contractor looked up as a pigeon fluttered towards him and landed on his arm. He untied the small roll of paper tied to its leg and read it, then turned to address the workers. “Orders from His Majesty. We must finish this bridge as quickly as possible. We’re to do our part to fulfill Lukahn’s prophecy!”  
A roar of assent came from all of the workers, and hammers and nails flashed and chimed with increased vigor and saws rumbled harder. A worker approached the contractor, panting. “What does this bridge have to do with the prophecy?”  
The contractor smiled and threw his arms out joyfully. “The four Warriors of Light are here… They’re here in Cornelia!”


	4. Pirating Pirates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party try to budget and experience their first death. Thank the Crystals for phoenix down.

“One of the guys from the item shop said the monsters north of the bridge have gotten more aggressive lately.”  
Ash put her chin in her hands and pouted in thought. “Okay. Do you know how much more aggressive?”  
Kai shrugged. “Just more aggressive than here. He also said something about Provoka being a pirates den now. It’s always been a sketchy town, so I’m not surprised.”  
The four sat on the floor of Ash’s room, a makeshift map in front of them. Ash had drawn the rough shape of the Cornelian peninsula and as much of the surrounding continents as she could and ex-ed in as many landmarks as the party could think of. It wasn’t a lot, and the map looked more like an astrology diagram than a world map.  
“This changes how fast we could get to Pravoka,” Ash said. “We could definitely make it within a day if we left early and ran into only a few monsters, like we did on the way to the Chaos Shrine. If they’re too much more fight-happy than the goblins and wolves here, I don’t think we should try to make the trip in one day.”  
“What about the pirates?” Gluten asked. “I signed up for monsters and seasickness, not pirates.”  
“If we don’t go to Pravoka, though, we can’t go west,” Ariella pointed out. “The last time a ship came into or out of Cornelia was months ago, and Pravoka’s the best port to get anywhere from anyway. We need to get there eventually.”  
Gluten flung herself back onto the floor, groaning.  
Ash sat up. “We can take on the pirates when we get there. Let’s just worry about how to get ourselves to Pravoka first.”  
“Really, the only thing we can do is to prepare as much as we can afford to,” Kai replied. “Potions are forty gil here. We have about fifteen hundred right now, so we could buy up to thirty-seven of them. We could buy a few antidotes just in case, too.”  
“Don’t forget phoenix down, too,” Ariella added. “We need those until I can find the instructions for Life.”  
Kai groaned. “Those are so expensive though. Five hundred gil for a tiny feather?”  
“That feather could save our lives, though,” Ash pointed out. “We should get one or two of those and use the rest to buy potions and antidotes. Ariella can cast Cure as a main healing strategy, and we can keep the potions as a supplement to that.”  
She folded up the map and stood up. “Ariella, I’m leaving the wallet with you, so buy what you think we need. Kai and I will go loot goblins and get some jerky for the trip.”  
Ariella nodded and grabbed her bag and the wallet. “I’ll go right now. Gluten, come with me.”  
Gluten rolled her eyes, but didn’t protest otherwise and followed her out of the inn.  
Ariella quickly did some math as they headed for the item shop. Two phoenix down would cost them a thousand gil, which left them with with five hundred gil for potions and antidotes. They could get seven potions for two-eighty, then use the remaining two-thirty for however many antidotes they could buy. She remembered antidotes costing fifty gil each, so if things went according to plan, she could buy two phoenix down, seven potions, and four antidotes, and have twenty gil left over. Not perfect, but it worked well enough.  
At least, it did until they got to the item shop and she saw the sleeping bags.  
“Didn’t we just have enough for the potions and antidotes?” Gluten asked when she noticed Ariella examining the bag. “How much do we even have left?”  
“I can get one less potion,” Ariella said. “‘Partially restores health and mana.’ This could come in handy if we end up having to stop before we get to Pravoka.”  
She gathered up the items and placed them on the counter. “How much will all of this be?”  
The shopkeeper quickly counted the items and scribbled down some numbers. “Two-forty for the six potions, a thousand for the two phoenix down, two hundred for the four antidotes, and fifty for the sleeping bag… that’ll be fourteen hundred and ninety gil.”  
Ariella pulled out the wallet to pay, but the shopkeeper reached out to stop her. “Although, if you’re going to get a sleeping bag, I would suggest getting one for each member or your party. They’re not really meant for multiple people to sleep in.”  
“We can’t afford that,” Ariella told him. “We only have enough for one sleeping bag. We’ll take turns using it.”  
“Trust me,” the shopkeeper said, “it’ll be better if you each have your own sleeping bag. The road to Pravoka gets cold these days. It’s not uncommon to have entire parties wiped out because they only bought one sleeping bag and everyone but the person using it froze to death. I wouldn’t want that to happen to the supposed Warriors of Light.”  
He leaned on the counter and held Ariella’s gaze. “The world needs saving, you know. You wouldn’t want to freeze to death before you save it, right?”  
Ariella stared back and mouthed at the air for a reply.  
Gluten glanced between her and the shopkeeper, then shoved the wallet at the shopkeeper. “I don’t think that’s going to be an issue. I’ve heard of people surviving hypothermia by huddling together. We owe you fourteen-ninety, right? Thank you!”  
She swept the items into Ariella’s bag and marched them out of the shop before the shopkeeper could say anything.  
Kai and Ash were waiting for them when they reached the fountain. Kai eyed the sleeping bag and sighed. “So how many potions do we have?”  
“Three left from the fight with Garland,” Ariella replied, “and six more from the shop. We also have four antidotes.”  
She held up the sleeping bag. “This would come in handy if we end up not being able to make it to Pravoka by tonight.”  
“Why is there only one sleeping bag?” Kai asked. “There’s four of us.”  
“Because if we bought any more, we wouldn’t have antidotes,” Gluten said. “And, the shopkeeper wanted us to choose between dying of poisoning or dying of hypothermia. I chose hypothermia for us.”  
Kai grumbled. Ash shrugged. “It’s fine. We’ll just take turns with it.”

Ariella reached for Ash’s hand for support to hop over another soft spot in the ground. Behind her, she heard a splat from Gluten. She’d probably tripped on her robe again and fell in another mud puddle.  
They’d crossed the bridge a few hours ago, and were making good time. Fortunately, the goblins and wolves seemed to leave them alone, and most of the other monsters were big enough for Kai to see from a distance and warn everyone to avoid. Ariella’s only complain was the terrain. The grass had suddenly gotten several times taller and thicker as soon as they’d crossed the bridge, making it hard for Kai to scout ahead and for Ariella and Ash to keep an eye on Gluten. It didn’t help that the black mage kept tripping on her robe, so that even her hat, which would’ve been clearly visible above the grass, was hardly ever in sight. Once she’d fallen face-first into a cobra nest, and Ash had barely gotten to her in time to kill the pissed-off snakes before they could attack her.  
They all breathed a sigh of relief when they broke through the grass and stepped out into marshland. Kai stretched and sighed. “Almost there, if I remember the directions right. We should make it through the woods by nightfall if we’re careful and don’t run into anything else.”  
“Good,” Gluten mumbled, wringing out the front of her robe. “I wasn’t keen on sleeping on the ground with snakes and stuff.”  
Her muddy robe squelched and oozed large drops of mud, and Ariella cringed away from her.  
Ash adjusted her bag and squared her shoulders. “Let’s go then!”  
She took a step forward onto what looked like a branch. It sprang to life under her foot, then screeched and reared up. Ariella and Gluten screamed and clung to each other and Ash stumbled backwards as a huge, purple worm sprang from where her foot had been, muddy water dripping from its thrashing tentacles and rows of fangs as it rose to tower over Ash. Kai whirled around, sword drawn, and shoved Ash out of the way as it pounced. She sidestepped and made a clean stroke, and the worm toppled over, decapitated and still screeching weakly. Kai waited for it to stop moving before turning to Ash with a stern look. “Key phrase, _if we’re careful._ ”  
Ash shrugged sheepishly. “Whoops.”  
They carefully made their way across, Ash and Kai keeping a lookout in front, Gluten and Ariella following close behind with their bags raised above their heads. The marsh here was much deeper and colder than the one near the Chaos Shrine, and Ariella shivered the entire way across. She was more than relieved when they made it across and entered the forest without any more worm encounters.  
Everyone seemed to have fallen into a false sense of security, because even Kai didn’t notice the ogre until it crashed out of the trees at them from behind, club waving. Ash jumped out and knocked Ariella to the ground as the ogre swung down, sweeping too close over their heads for comfort. Ariella scooted as far towards the nearest tree as she could and quickly scanned the scene, panic rising in her chest. Where Gluten had been before, there was a large crater. Ash had stood back up and was drawing her sword. There was blood coming from her hairline and she looked a little disoriented. Kai already had hers in hand and leapt at the ogre. It reached out and smacked at her with its hand, knocking her into the ground in front of Ariella. She sat up, coughing. “Ouch.”  
Ash barely blocked another swing from the ogre. The impact of the club hitting her blade sent her reeling back into a tree. She shook her head and blinked furiously, trying to focus. The ogre swung again, this time catching Ash in the side. She toppled over and tried to sit up, flinching as the ogre missed on the follow-up and hit the tree behind her instead.  
Ariella cracked a potion bottle over Kai’s head and shoved a second one into her hands. “Get this to Ash if you can. I’m going to get to Gluten.”  
Kai gave her a quick salute and helped her stand. While Ariella ran for the crater, Kai took a running start at a nearby tree and dashed up it. Ariella watched in awe as she leapt off the tree at the ogre before it could swing again, landing both feet into its temple with enough force to knock it sideways into a tree. She landed with a graceful flip next to Ash, uncorked the potion, and practically shoved the mouth of the bottle down her throat. “Drink up!”  
Ash spluttered and coughed up half of the potion before snatching the bottle and chugging the rest. Ariella skidded to a stop next to the crater and hopped in next to Gluten. The black mage was wheezing in pain and a large puddle of blood was forming under her. Ariella quickly summoned light into her hands and held them over Gluten. “By the power of the Crystals--”  
“Look out!”  
Kai leapt over the crater, followed by the ogre’s club swinging down. Ariella shrieked and flattened herself, her heart nearly stopping when she felt the club stop inches from her back. The ogre lifted the club and Ash dashed forward. She checked the ogre in the gut with a yell and shoved hard, pushing it away from Ariella and Gluten. Kai skidded to a stop on her knees next to the crater. “Are you guys okay?”  
Ariella opened her mouth to reply, but Kai was already scrambling after Ash. “Stay low for now. Ash and I almost got this sucker.” She slashed wide, cutting the ogre across the gut. It roared in pain.  
Ariella turned back to focus on Gluten. Her hat had fallen off, and Ariella could tell from Gluten’s ashen face that she’d lost too much blood for Cure or potions to be effective. She turned to rummage through her bag for bandages to stop the bleeding, and a bloody, pale hand grabbed at her wrist She glared at Gluten. “Stay still!”  
“Don’t mind me,” Gluten said weakly and grinned. Her eyes shone with tears. “I know I’m dead. Save your supplies for the other two.”  
“I’m not letting you die,” Ariella snapped. “Now stop talking while I fix this.”  
Gluten completely ignored her and raised her hand. A small ball of fire swirled to life in her palm. Ariella glared. “Gluten, _no_.”  
Gluten suddenly sprouted leaks from places Ariella didn’t even know the human body could spring leaks, showering herself and Ariella with blood as she forced the fireball to grow to full size. “Fire!”  
She flung the ball at the ogre where Ash and Kai had it pinned to a tree. Ash and Kai ducked in time for it to sail over their heads and hit the ogre square in the chest. It roared in pain as the fire took to its body and spread wildly. The smell of burning ogre filled the forest.  
Ash and Kai ran to the crater and jumped in next to Ariella and Gluten, who had fallen back with a thud. Ash grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her gently despite Ariella reaching out to stop her. “Oi! Gluten! What’re you doing? Wake up!”  
“It’s no use,” Kai moaned softly. “She’s dead.”  
Ash gasped and shook harder. “Gluten!”  
The black mage’s body flopped back and forth unresponsively. Ash finally set her down, face still set in shock. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
Kai hung her head and sniffed. “We hadn’t even really begun our journey yet. How could this happen?”  
Ariella sighed. “Well, this happens on adventures, I guess.”  
Ash gasped. “Ariella, how could you say that?”  
“Yeah!” Kai followed. “Gluten just died! How are you not sad about this? This is terrible!”  
“I know it’s terrible,” Ariella said. “Under normal circumstances, this would be a situation where I would say freaking out is justified. But luckily…” She reached into her bag and pulled out a tiny labeled bottle containing a red-and-orange feather. “... We have phoenix down!”  
Kai and Ash stopped crying and stared. Ariella uncorked the bottle, shook the feather out, and forced Gluten’s mouth open to put it on her tongue. Ash and Kai crowded in anxiously and Ariella gently pushed them back, showing them the label on the bottle. “We need to wait a minute.”  
Ash and Kai practically buzzed the entire minute. Ariella glanced at the label again, then uncorked a potion bottle and watched Gluten expectantly. Finally, Gluten’s finger twitched, and she stirred. She suddenly shot straight up, eyes wide, and Ariella immediately shoved the potion into her mouth and tilted her head back. “Relax your throat, I need you to chug this.”  
Gluten struggled and sputtered for a minute before grabbing the bottle herself and downing the rest of the potion. She dropped the empty bottle, gasping for breath, and looked around wildly. “[CENSORED], that was scary.”  
Ash and Kai leapt at her and knocked her back down. Her eyes bulged and she flailed and wheezed as they threatened to squeeze the life right back out of her. “Guys!”  
“Don’t do that again!” Ash sobbed. “You scared the living daylights out of me!”  
“Couldn’t really help it,” Gluten wheezed. “That thing came out of nowhere. Stop smothering me, please. I’m gonna die again.”  
The two immediately let go. Kai turned around to meet Ariella’s eyes, and Ariella held up the other phoenix down. “Five hundred gil, but it saved a life.”  
Kai scoffed and stood up. “Whatever. We should get going if we want to at least get through the forest today.”  
They made good time after that, and were much more vigilant. The sun was just beginning to set by the time they saw a walled town in the distance. Ariella breathed a sigh of relief, Gluten melted into a tired puddle, and Ash tightened the straps of her bag and wound herself up to run down the hill. “Almost there!”  
“Wait!”  
Kai grabbed Ash before she could take off. She craned her neck to get a better look over the walls. “We shouldn’t just rush in. Pravoka’s not that safe to begin with, and now there’s apparently a pirate problem there.”  
“So?” Ariella shrugged. “We beat the strongest swordsman in Cornelia. There’s no way a few pirates would give us trouble.”  
“They can’t be that bad, right?” Ash said. “Pirates are basically giant goblins with a big boat, if you think about it.”  
“And also come in bigass groups and all have at least one sword,” Gluten said. “I agree with Kai, we shouldn’t go in. We should turn around and go back to Cornelia.”  
“That’s not what I said!” Kai snapped, then took a deep breath. “We should still go. We need to if we want to take a ferry south. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t rush into this. We don’t know how they’re organized, how strong they are, or how much influence they have over the town.”  
Ariella nodded. “Very true.”  
Gluten turned around and started walking back into the woods. “Yeah, forget this. We’re probably going to die.”  
“One way to find out,” Ash said, and grabbed Gluten by the collar before marching down the hill. Kai stood there, stunned, for a moment before taking off after them. “Wait, Ash!”  
“Hey!” Ariella barely had time to reach out as Kai zipped past her and down the hill. She grumbled and shuffled carefully down the hill after them. “Don’t mind me, literally left in the dust again…”  
She ran the last few yards to where her three companions had stopped outside the town gate. Gluten sat against the wall, wheezing and massaging her neck, while Ash and Kai argued in whispers.  
“You can’t just rush into a situation without knowing what you’re dealing with,” Kai hissed furiously.  
“We did that with Garland and it worked just fine,” Ash whispered back.  
“That was one guy. Have you ever seen a lone pirate before? They usually come in groups of at least ten!”  
“So? It’ll be one against two each. I could probably take on three by myself.”  
Ariella coughed loudly. “Ahem!”  
Kai and Ash looked up. “Yes?”  
“Two suggestions,” Ariella said. “One, if you don’t know the situation, we should probably go in and check. Two, stop running off without me. Please.”  
The two looked at her sheepishly and muttered in apology. Ariella gave them one last stern glower and smoothed her robe. “So are we going in or not?”  
“Yep,” Ash and Kai said in unison and stood up. Ash yanked Gluten to her feet and prodded her after Kai and Ariella towards the gate.  
The first thing that stood out was that the streets were deserted. Ariella felt a chill down her spine as she looked around. “Are towns usually this quiet at this time?”  
“Pravoka’s not,” Kai said. “It’s a port town, so it’s pretty lively even at night. Something’s not right.”  
“We could turn back,” Gluten suggested. “We have enough supplies to last us back to Cornelia, and we probably have enough gil from looting monster corpses by now to afford refills when we get back.”  
“We’re not walking all the way back to Cornelia at night,” Ariella gritted.  
Ash walked ahead and pointed down the alley near the town plaza. “We could ask them?”  
Ariella dragged Gluten behind her and followed. Kai drew her dagger and went to look. “Ask who?”  
Two men sat in the alley. One had a green mohawk and leaned against the wall. Blood seeped through his shirt at his waist. The other man, younger and blue-haired, leaned over him with bandages in one hand and a knife in the other. Both stared suspiciously at the four.  
Ariella immediately ducked into the alley and handed the green-haired man a potion. “Here, this’ll help.”  
He took it with a nod of thanks, uncorked the bottle, and downed the whole thing. Kai sheathed her dagger and went to help him adjust against the wall. “What happened to you?”  
The green-haired man groaned. “It’s those blasted pirates! They’re running around looting and pillaging like they own the place.”  
“Robberies happen in broad daylight now,” the blue-haired man said. “It’s gotten so bad that ships even stopped coming in from Elfheim because they lose all the goods as soon as they dock.”  
Ariella looked at Ash. “Darn it, that means the ferry’s out.”  
“The captain’s name is Bikke,” the green-haired explained. “He and his men have set up headquarters or the like in the west square. Normally I’d’ve avoided going there, but I had to run an errand. I wouldn’t suggest going there.”  
Ash nodded. “Don’t worry. We’ll go take care of them for you.”  
“What?” Gluten cried out.  
The blue-haired man shook his head furiously. “You really shouldn’t! They’d have you dead on the ground in seconds!”  
“We need to get a ferry south though,” Kai said. “There’s no way to get south or off the continent at all without going by sea. If the pirates are the problem, we should take care of them.”  
“Besides,” Ash added, “we can’t just leave you like this. Do you guys plan on letting the pirates terrorize you forever?”  
The two men stared at them, then looked at each other. The green-haired man sighed. “I guess not. Be careful though, will you?”  
“I wouldn’t worry,” Ariella assured them. “We haven’t been traveling together for long, but we all really clicked and work really smoothly together. Ash and Kai especially are super strong, and Gluten’s strong when she’s not dead and puts her mind to it.”  
Gluten glared at her. “Hey!”  
The blue-haired man nodded and bowed deeply. “If that’s the case, please help us!”  
Ash gave them a thumbs up and smiled. She turned to the other three. “Let’s go.”  
The four marched across the plaza and along the canals and streets towards the west square. As they walked, Ariella noticed that the houses all had their curtains drawn. A few people peeked out of the windows at the four as they approached, quickly disappearing when they passed by.  
They rounded a corner to bright firelight. Loud, rude laughter echoed out, and Kai signalled for everyone to stop behind a house. Ariella peeked around the corner to see a group of roughly dressed, armed and bearded men milling around the torch-lit square. Some were eating and drinking, some were sorting through a pile of what had to be pillaged goods and belongings from the townspeople, and a few were brawling in the middle of the square, cheered on by their friends.  
“How many do you see?” Ash whispered to Kai.  
“Nine or ten, not including Bikke,” Kai reported. “I can’t see him very well, though. He’s got himself set up against the house in front of us.”  
“Anywhere we could sneak in?” Ariella asked.  
Kai scanned the area again and shook her head. “There’s another entrance a little further down that way, but it’s got worse visibility for us and about the same for them as if we tried to come from this direction.”  
“What about the canal?” Ariella pointed out. “There’s a whole network of them across Pravoka. It’d be uncomfortable, but we could definitely sneak to a better entry point through them if we need to.”  
“That wouldn’t work,” Kai said. “The entrances across the plaza are even worse. We’d be right in Bikke’s line of sight if we came in from there.”  
Ash frowned. “They’re drinking a lot. We could just wait till they pass out, then ambush from any which entrance.”  
Kai nodded. “I think we’ll have to do that. Everyone back up before they see us. We should probably take the time to recover if we need to. Ariella?”  
Ariella nodded and handed her and Ash each a potion. They uncorked them and she turned around with another two for herself and Gluten. “Hey, Gluten, here.”  
The street behind her was empty. She blinked and looked around. “Hey, guys, where’s Gluten?”  
Kai and Ash stopped mid-swig and stared. A sudden splash and a curse somewhere nearby had them all leaping to their feet. “Crap!”  
“How did we even lose track of her?” Ash wondered. “She was right here!”  
“Forget that,” Kai said. “We have to find her before the pirates do.”  
Ariella pointed to the square. “Too late.”  
The splash had gotten the pirates’ attention, and a group had gathered on the canal side of the square. The pirates clamored as one of them fished out a limp figure in a waterlogged blue robe and yellow hat. Kai groaned. “Seriously?!”  
The pirates threw Gluten into the center of the square with a loud, wet splat. She sat up shakily and shook the water out of her hat. One of the pirates prodded her roughly with his foot and she flopped over. “And just what be ye doing ‘ere?”  
“Ye wouldn’t be lookin’ to make trouble with Bikke’s Bikkeneers, would ye?” another one sneered and followed with shove of his own.  
Gluten coughed up some water and groaned. “Stop pushing me please.”  
The pirates ignored her and jeered louder. Gluten seemed to shrink into herself and started shaking. Ash and Kai drew their swords and got up to run to her aid. Suddenly Gluten screeched and shot to her feet, a huge fireball appearing between her hands. The pirates leapt back and drew their swords, surrounding her.  
Gluten’s eyes blazed with fury or the reflection from the fire all around her, or both. She turned to one of the pirates who had kicked her first and inhaled deeply. “[CENSORED] I said stop pushing me! Damn Crystals, this day sucks!”  
The fireball expanded to a monstrous size and she hurled it. Ash grabbed Ariella and Kai and the three flinched as the fireball exploded against the wall across from them. As soon as the heat receded, Ariella pushed Ash aside and stumbled into the square. “Gluten!”  
Ash and Kai ran after her and they all reached out to stand next to Gluten, who was still glaring down the pirates with steam coming out of her ears. The pirates had recovered from her attack and were advancing again, no trace of mockery left in their expressions. Ariella pulled out her hammer and raised it to her shoulder.  
A stout pirate in a singed black hat and purple overcoat shouldered his way through the others to glare at Gluten. He drew his sword and growled. “Ye’ve got cannonballs of steel to be takin’ on the great pirate Bikke!”  
“And ye’ve got rotten balls of pudding to be terrorizing a defenseless town, you son of a goblin-pizzling old butthag!” Kai snapped right back. “Great pirate Bikke? Gimme a break. You couldn’t even swindle your way out of that deal with Mikke! The real, OG great pirate Mikke, who controlled world trade and conquered the world’s oceans without sparking fear in a single town. What’ve you got, the Aldean Sea? It’s not even a real sea. You’re literally king of an oversized pond, you knock-off! Great pirate my ass!”  
The whole square went silent as Ash, Ariella, and a calmed-down Gluten stared at Kai and the pirates all stared at Bikke. Bikke’s jaw dropped farther than Ariella ever knew was physically possible, and he looked like he’d just been slapped. “You can’t be her.”  
Kai curtsied. “It’s me.”  
Bikke turned bright red and ran at Kai with his sword raised. “You!”  
Kai, Ash, Ariella and Gluten dispersed as Bikke swung down. Kai smacked his wrist with the flat of her dagger and he dropped his sword with a howl of pain. He turned to the other pirates, nursing his wrist. “Keelhaul ‘em, boys!”  
The other pirates shook themselves and charged the group, roaring. “Aye-aye, Capt’n! We’ll make their bones go crunch!”  
Ariella swung her hammer into one’s face, grimacing as she heard and felt the man’s teeth and jaw shatter. “Sorry!”  
Behind her, Ash had locked blades with two pirates at once. A third tried to come up from behind her, but she glanced back just in time. She sidestepped as he tried to stab her and flung his two companions into him, toppling all three into the canal. Gluten dodged a swing from another pirate and almost fell back into the canal, but Ash pulled her out of the way. The pirate behind her swung too hard, and the momentum sent him tumbling in as well. Gluten turned around and pointed a finger at the canal. “Thunder!”  
A small bolt of lightning shot from her fingertip into the water. There was a loud zap, accompanied by a flash of light as the canal sparked and gasping screams from the pirates, followed by the smell of singed clothes and flesh.  
Kai danced around a couple of pirates who were trying to slash at her in the center of the square. Ariella swung at one who was trying to attack Kai from behind, hitting him in the stomach with enough force to send him reeling backwards straight into Ash. Ash dropped her sword and grabbed him around the waist, throwing him against the ground as hard as she could. The wind whooshed out of him and Ariella swore she heard something crack.  
“Move!”  
Ariella leapt aside as Kai rolled past, followed by another pirate. He stumbled, and Kai took the chance to go after his leg while Ariella jumped on his back. The combination of Kai’s trip and Ariella’s sudden weight had the pirate smacking into the ground. He groaned under Ariella, who tossed Kai a thumbs up. Kai turned to flash a grin and ran straight into the chest of Bikke, who had recovered and grabbed his sword. He wasted no time in grabbing her and spinning her around to face the other three with the sword pressed to her throat. “Drop yer weapons or she gets it!”  
Ash and Gluten immediately held up their hands, and Ariella dropped her hammer and followed suit. Two pirates ran to force them to their knees, swords at their backs. Bikke laughed and tightened his grip on Kai, who was starting to go red. “Who’s got the last laugh now, ye slimy little thief?! Now’s the time I got me revenge on ye for what you did!”  
Kai responded by stomping on his toes and elbowing into his groin. Bikke howled in pain and let go of her, and she swept her leg under him. He crashed to the ground and she hurled her knife at Ash, who caught it midair and swung around to slice into the pirate behind her. He fell, groaning, and Ash tossed the knife back to Kai and turned to Gluten. “Gluten, nuke ’em!”  
Gluten summoned a fireball in her palm and turned around to smack the pirate holding her and Ariella in the face. The fireball exploded on impact and the pirate screamed in pain. The smell of burning hair, cloth and flesh filled the air, and Ariella gagged.  
Kai helped Ariella up and they joined Gluten and Ash to stand back-to-back, weapons recovered and drawn. The pirates lay in groaning, bleeding, burning heaps around the square, and showed no signs of getting up soon. Kai cautiously broke formation to approach Bikke, who rose unsteadily to try and hit her again. Kai easily parried and swung at Bikke’s leg. Her sword cut through his boot and trouser leg easily, and his leg gave out from underneath him. Kai smacked the sword out of his hand for good measure and pointed her sword at him. “Who keelhauled who?”  
“Okay, okay!” Bikke cowered at Kai’s feet and peeked out fearfully at the other three. “I be most sorry, young misses. I’ll be makin’ no more fuss, I swear.”  
“If you’re really sorry,” Ash said in an even tone, “Get the ferries up and running for us.”  
“I’ll de ye one better,” Bikke whimpered. “I want ye to take me ship fer yer troubles. Can ye find it in yer hearts to fergive an old pirate?”  
Ash blinked. “It would actually be better if we have our own ship.”  
“Yeah,” Ariella agreed. “That way, we wouldn’t have to rely on the ferries at all.”  
“I prefer walking,” Gluten mumbled. “I get really bad seasickness.”  
Kai was silent. After a long minute she nodded. “Fine. We’ll take the ship.”  
She turned to walk away and Bikke sagged in relief. Kai turned back around and pointed her sword at him and he immediately shrank back again.  
“Don’t you dare let me hear about you causing trouble again,” Kai warned. “Word travels fast between travelers. I’ll know if you try anything, and I’ll come right back to Pravoka to set you straight again.”  
She sheathed her sword and went to retrieve the fallen pirates from the canal. Ariella handed Gluten the last of the potions and motioned to the other pirates scattered around the square. “Line them up against the wall after you’re done. I’ll cover for anyone who’s still severely injured.”

Ariella woke up the next morning in a comfortable bed in the inn to the sound of a busy town. The other three beds in the room were unmade and empty. Smiling groggily, she pulled herself out of bed and headed for the lobby.  
Ash and Kai were seated at the low table in the middle of the lobby, drawing out more of their makeshift map. Ash waved to Ariella as she came to sit next to them. “Morning.”  
“Morning,” she mumbled back. “Where’d Gluten go?”  
“We sent her out to buy potions,” Kai replied. “We used all of ours healing up the pirates last night. Between the money Bikke gave us and the stuff we got from monsters on the way here, we should have enough for at least ten.”  
“What was up with you and Bikke last night, anyway?” Ash asked. “It seemed like you knew each other from somewhere.”  
Kai laughed nervously. “I ran into him and his brother Mikke a couple of years ago here. I was selling some gadgets and knickknacks to him, and caught him swindling from another seller. I tried swindling him back and got caught. He had henchmen back then too, but they were way better then. I had to leave Pravoka when they came after me. Mikke and I got to be friends before that, and he was nice enough to smuggle me out. I heard he died in a wreck at sea soon after.”  
The door opened, and Gluten burst through with the two men from the night before behind her. All three of them carried an armload of provisions ranging from potions to food to new weapons. Ariella swore she saw a tent peeking out from underneath it all. Kai’s eyebrows disappeared into her hairline with surprise. “Dang.”  
“They helped me carry all of this over,” Gluten said. “Apparently the pirates surrendered all of the looted goods, and we’re getting a pretty big portion of it. Look! They even had good potatoes!” She held up a huge sack of potatoes each the size of a fist.  
“Because of you, we needn’t fear the pirates anymore!” the blue-haired man cheered. “Thank you so much!”  
“Aww, guys,” Kai said, “you don’t have to do this for us.”  
“It’ll be useful, trust me,” insisted the green-haired man. “The Aldean Sea might merely be a sea, but it’s still vast, and the waters are rough. You could sail for weeks simply because of a storm. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”  
Ariella sorted through the provisions, separating restoratives from camping supplies from food, and Ash reached for the weapons. She grabbed a simple battle axe and tested its weight in her hand. “This’ll be way better than the swords we have now. Thank you so much!”  
“Yeah,” Kai echoed, picking up a scimitar and tracing the blade with her fingers. “This is way more than you should give us, but thank you.”  
“I hope they serve you well,” said the blue-haired man. “There are many monsters in the Aldean Sea. Best be careful!”  
“We will, don’t worry,” Ariella assured him.  
Ash set her axe down and returned to her map. “Okay! Now that we have a ship, where to next?”  
“We should probably head west,” Kai suggested. “There’s a guy on the east side of town who came from that direction. Melmond, I think the name of the town was? He mentioned the earth was rotting near there.”  
“I think we should still go south as originally planned, to Crescent Lake,” Ariella said. “The town’s famous for its sages, so if anyone can tell us more about the prophecy, it’ll be them. If anything, we might also find this Lukahn that the king of Cornelia was talking about.”  
“But we already know the location of one of the Crystals,” Kai pointed out. “The king mentioned heading west, and now we have proof that there’s something there. Shouldn’t we go check it out before we do anything else?”  
“We can’t,” Gluten said. “The earth’s grown together where people used to be able to sail through to the west. Honestly, the Aldean Sea is more like the Aldean Bigass Lake now. Unless we can carry a whole ship over about a mile of dirt, there’s no way we’re getting to Melmond.”  
“Okay,” Ash said. “What do you suggest we do then?”  
“I agree with Ariella,” Kai replied. “We should head south, to Crescent Lake. I asked around and there aren’t any ports nearby that we can access from the Aldean Sea, but we could try going to Elfheim. It’s just to the west of Crescent Lake, so we could do a pit stop there and traveling east through the mountain streams.”  
Ariella nodded. “That might be the best way. We might be able to get a canoe in Elfheim, or someone might have left one near the streams.”  
Ash nodded and folded up the map. “Let’s load up then. Next stop, Elfheim!”


	5. Seasick and Sleepy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai learns how to drive a ship, and she and Ash face a test of their friendship. Ash leads her friends into deadly territory to help a royal coma patient.

Ash slapped Gluten on the back repeatedly as the black mage vomited over the side of the ship. There was a break in her retching, and Ash switched from thumping to rubbing and pulled her back up. “You feeling okay?”  
“Oh yes,” Gluten gurgled, her voice dripping with sarcasm and leftover bile. “Beautiful. Godly. On top of the world. I just threw up everything I’ve ever eaten and I’ve never felt better.”  
“Take it easy for a day or two,” Ash said, “and sit towards the middle of the ship or go below deck if it’s the rocking that’s making you sick. Do you want water?”  
Gluten shook her head and slumped to the floor, groaning. Ash sighed and hooked her arms under Gluten’s to drag her towards the hatch leading below deck.  
Ariella was standing to the port side, holding tightly to the railing. She waved to Ash and pointed out at the water excitedly. “Look! There’s fish!”  
Right on cue, a huge school of flying fish leapt out of the water. Ariella gasped excitedly and Gluten pulled herself away from Ash and slogged to the railing to get a better look. The two oohed and continued pointing, and Ash made her way back to where Kai stood at the steering wheel. “Kai! Did you see that?”  
“Yeah, I did,” Kai replied. She grinned and adjusted the wheel. “I didn’t know there were still fish like that. The ones I’ve seen are all pretty mutated.”  
“The ones closer to the northern continents are all like that,” Ash said. “I wonder why.”  
“It’s probably something to do with the Crystals,” Kai speculated. “The water quality near Onrac’s been terrible for ages. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what’s causing the mutations.”  
A scream had them both grabbing their weapons and running for the bow. The flying fish had come at the ship and were flying over the railing onto the deck. Gluten and Ariella had both pulled out their spellbooks to shield themselves from being pelted with the fish. Ash dodged a particularly big one and swung her axe at a tuna that came flying over. She completely missed and the tuna hit her square in the chest, knocking her across the deck. She shoved it off and looked around frantically. “What’s going on?”  
“They’re escaping,” Kai shouted across the deck at her as she deflected three fish with ease. “They don’t jump like this unless something’s chasing them.”  
“It’s not anything big, right?” Gluten yelled. “Whatever it is, it better not be coming up on deck, because these tiny ones are bad enough.”  
A huge shadow fell across the four and a shark sailed over the railing and skidded to hit the starboard side. Ariella groaned. “Of course you had to jinx it.”  
The shark roared and wiggled towards them. Kai and Ash swung at the same time, Ash cleaving it through the head, lodging the blade of the axe firmly in the shark’s forehead, and Kai catching one side of its mouth and making a clean slice through its jaw and gills. The shark flailed harder, knocking Gluten and Kai across the deck with its tail. Ash kept a death grip on the handle of her axe as the shark slipped through the blood, water and flying fish on the deck straight into Ariella and pinned her to the railing when it came to a stop on the port side. Ash straddled the shark’s head, dug her heels in, and yanked the axe out to sink it in between its eyes. The shark’s flailing weakened rapidly until it flopped against the deck and stayed.  
Ash slid off and hauled on the shark’s pectoral fin until Ariella was able to wiggle free. They both looked around frantically, gasping for breath, until they spotted Kai gracefully swinging her way down from where she’d hit a net and Gluten untangling herself from a pile of rope next to the mast.  
Ariella turned to the shark and huffed. “What do we do with it now?”  
“We can’t throw it overboard,” Kai called as she carefully stepped over. “There might be more nearby. The blood will attract them.”  
“We can’t eat it either,” Gluten grumbled as she threw aside the last rope and stepped out of the pile. “I don’t know how to butcher a shark, and I’m pretty sure there’re protective laws against hunting sharks.”  
“It’s kind of late to worry about that,” Ash said.  
There was a loud scrape and the ship lurched, throwing all of them off balance. Kai immediately sprang back up and stumbled for the steering wheel. “Crap!”  
She threw herself at the wheel and heaved, and the ship turned sharply away from the rocks it had pulled up a little too close to. Ash slid over the deck to rest against the railing, ducking as the shark slammed into the railing next to her with enough momentum to crash through the railing and back into the water with a loud sploosh. A swathe of bloody, flopping flying fish and the tuna washed after it in a chorus of splashes. Ariella slipped past as well and Ash grabbed her and yanked her to the side before she could slip out after the shark.  
Kai yanked on the wheel a few more times and the ship slowly righted itself. The other three all turned to glare at her and she turned bright red. “Sorry.”

The moon lit the deck silver and the ship’s ropes and mast creaked gently with the rocking of the waves. Ash sat in the crow’s nest and gazed up at the stars scattered above them. Her fingers traced thoughtfully around the burned edges of the wooden pendant with the word ash carved into it around her neck, dark with age and damp with sea vapor, that hung around her neck. She’d had it for as long as she could remember, but she could never recall where she’d gotten it from, or from whom, as hard as she tried. A long time ago, she thought, it must’ve been pretty. The burns didn’t look or feel deliberate, so something must’ve happened to damage it like this.  
The rope ladder below her creaked and clacked against the mast, and Kai pulled herself up through the hole in the floor next to Ash. “Can’t sleep?”  
“Maybe in a bit,” Ash replied. “The rocking is taking some getting used to. Who’s at the wheel if you’re up here?”  
“Gluten and Ariella are taking a turn,” Kai said. “Ariella’s good with directions, and Gluten needs something to focus on besides the ship moving if she wants to stop being seasick. I told them we’ll come down to help if we spot a port.”  
She settled down across from Ash and crossed her legs. “What’re you thinking about?”  
“Nothing in particular,” Ash said. “Just anything. Maybe what I’m going to do after we restore all the Crystals. What’ll you do?”  
“Keep wandering, probably,” Kai said. “I’ve been traveling for a good few years and I’ve seen a lot of different places, but I haven’t been able to stay in one place for long. Or maybe I’ll try to go home. I’ve been away for way too long. I like all the adventures and all, but there’s no place like home.”  
She looked at Ash. “What about you? Anywhere you want to go back to?”  
Ash frowned and shook her head. “Not in particular. I’ve never had a connection with any particular place or person until meeting you. Even if I did before, I don’t remember now. I can’t remember anything before meeting you, now that I think about it. I didn’t even remember my own name until you asked me if Ash was my name. Even then, it sounded so weird for a while.”  
Kai tilted her head to think. “Now that I think about it, you’ve never really mentioned anywhere in particular. I thought you were from Onrac for a while since that was the only town in the area where we met.”  
Ash frowned harder. “That’s always a weird name to hear for some reason. I feel like I’ve heard it before somewhere, but I always end up drawing a blank on anything after that.”  
Kai shrugged. “We could always revisit it later. Maybe find something that’ll jog your memories.”  
Ash nodded. “That’s an idea. Hope we stick together until we get to that point.”  
“I’m sure we will,” Kai assured her. “I plan on sticking with you all until this whole saving the world adventure is over. Long after, if possible.”  
A shout came from below and they both stood up. Gluten and Ariella were pointing excitedly to a dark, uneven band across the horizon. Ash and Kai squinted, and Ash could faintly make out a faint dot of torchlight, a stone docking area, and a treeline.  
Kai swung herself over the side of the crow’s nest and climbed down a nearby rope net to the deck. Ash followed closely behind and took her place by the anchor. “Let me know when, okay?”  
Kai tossed her a thumbs up.  
“Maybe we should stay away from the dock,” Gluten called out as she and Ariella put away the sails. “That way Kai doesn’t dash us half to death again.”  
Kai scowled and jerked the wheel. The ship lurched and Gluten tumbled head over heels across the deck. She slowly stood up, shaking. “Okay, okay!”  
Kai shouted over her shoulder as the dock came fully into view, and Ash hauled at the rudder. The ship lurched and turned sharply, scraping against the stone. Everyone was thrown forward as the ship came to a stop. Ash immediately leapt off the deck onto the dock to inspect the damage. Except for an alarming amount of splintering skid marks along the side, the ship seemed to be fine. In the dim light from the beacon mounted onto the deck, Ash could see a gleam of metal through one of the more severe skid marks.  
A ladder lowered beside her and Kai scrambled down to look as well. “Looks like Bikke had the insides reinforced. As dumb as he is, I have to give him points for this one.”  
“I’m surprised the ship didn’t sink with the metal,” Ash mused.  
“It’s not something you’d think of,” Kai said as she tied the ship to the dock. “Metal’s actually pretty good for boat building.”  
Gluten leaned over the railing to call down to them. “So what do we do now?”  
“We could head for Elfheim now,” Ash suggested. “It’s too dark to try and travel through the channels, and Elfheim isn't too far. If I remember correctly from what the guys in Pravoka told us, it’s just in the middle of the forest. If we walk long enough we’ll find it eventually.”  
“Not in the middle of the night!” Gluten shook her head hard enough for her hat to come loose. “Do you want me to get pancaked from behind by an ogre again?”  
“It’s risky to travel at night if we don’t know the area,” Kai said. “That being said, we do need to find a place to restock on provisions soon. There were way too many flying sharks out in the water and we really ate into our potions.”  
“But ogres,” Gluten whined.  
Ariella looked at Ash. “What do you think?”  
Ash shrugged. “As long as we stick together, we should be fine. Gluten can stay in the middle of the group this time. I’m pretty good about sensing danger so I’ll take the rear.”  
Gluten whined louder. Kai ignored her and nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Ariella, can you grab the tent from below deck and toss it down? We should bring it just in case.”  
Ariella nodded and shoved Gluten towards the ladder. “Go on. We’re leaving.”  
Gluten moped down the ladder and melted into a puddle on the ground. “Why can’t I just stay with the ship?”  
“Because we can’t trust you not to die by yourself,” Ash said.  
Gluten waved her arms weakly. “I’m sleepy though.”  
Ash sighed and hauled her up over her shoulders. “Okay, you sack of potatoes. Let’s get going.”  
Kai helped Ariella off of the ladder and both shouldered their packs. “And off we go.”  
The walk through the forest was a quiet one, save for the crunching of the leaves beneath their feet and Gluten’s snoring. Ash could make out eyes and red, yellow, and green fur showing from gaps in the trees. She pressed closer to Kai, who walked ahead with a torch. “I know wolves and warg wolves, but what’re the green ones?”  
“Werewolves,” Ariella called from behind her. “They don’t really turn into people or anything. It’s just what the elves call them. The green coats look like elf clothes, I guess.”  
“Imagine if they were actually werewolf elves, though,” Kai chuckled. “I don’t know if that’d be more cute or terrifying.”  
“Probably both,” Ariella said.  
They continued walking in silence. Ash winced when Gluten stirred and dug her chin deeper into her shoulder. “Are we there yet?” she mumbled.  
“Not yet,” Ash replied. “We’re probably almost there, though.”  
“Are we sure we’re walking in the right direction?” Kai asked. “We’ve been walking for a while now.”  
“It’d be helpful if we had a map that we didn’t have to draw in as we go,” Ash grumbled. “I wouldn’t even care if the king of Cornelia hadn’t given us anything else. A map is literally the most useful thing out here besides potions. At least, he should’ve given us a compass.”  
“I found a compass on the ship,” Gluten chimed in. “Would that help?”  
Ash dropped Gluten and whirled around. She and Ariella glared at her as she sat sprawled on the ground, rubbing her backside and whimpering. “ _What?_ ”  
Kai turned around and stood over Gluten. The torchlight made the already pissed thief look absolutely murderous. “You had a compass this whole time and you didn’t think to tell anyone?”  
Gluten stared up at her and held up a tiny brass compass, trembling. Kai snatched it out of her hand, grumbling, and examined it closely. She pointed somewhere off to the side and shoved the compass into her collar. “We’re going that way now.”  
The four set off in the new direction, the quiet now punctuated by Kai’s annoyed muttering and angrier footsteps. Gluten clung to Ash’s arm, still trembling. “I’m sorry, I forgot I had it,” she whimpered.  
Ariella grunted in reply. Ash didn’t comment.  
They all breathed a sigh of relief when they saw torchlight and a wooden fence in the distance. Kai stretched and groaned. “Finally!”  
Ariella rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Not quite yet. We still have to find the inn. We’ve been walking for the better part of the night and my feet are killing me.”  
Gluten puddled on the ground and started snoring. Ash hauled her up and slapped her across the back to wake her up. “Nope, not yet, Glutes.”  
Kai looked around and nodded towards a large cabin with an INN sign. “There.”  
Ash hauled Gluten over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes and readjusted her bag on the other. “Awesome.”  
She’d barely taken a step when something small, green, and babbling barreled into her and sent her keeling over. Gluten squealed as she was thrown through the air and bounced to a stop. The green figure straddled Ash’s stomach and shook her hard by the shoulders, still blubbering. “Please! You’ve got to help us!”  
Ash flopped back and forth uselessly until Kai reached out and pulled the figure off to stand in front of her. The figure, an elf, tried to wiggle away, and Kai had to grab him tightly by the shoulders to keep him still. “Hey, hey! Didn’t anyone tell you not to run people over? Whatever, what’s got you so worked up that you have to run people over? Tell me.”  
The elf stared at her in terror, and his bottom lip trembled dangerously. Ariella pushed Kai aside and knelt down in front of the elf. “It’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you. Take a deep breath. In, and out. Okay, again.”  
The elf followed her instructions until his breathing steadied. Ariella nodded and patted his shoulders. “Okay. Now, tell us what’s wrong. What’s so urgent that you need to knock people over like that?”  
The elf took a shaky breath. “Our-our prince. He’s been asleep for-for-for years. We-we’ve tried everything--”  
“You!”  
Ash sat up just in time to be knocked over again by another elf as she zoomed past her to shove Ariella aside and shaking the first elf violent by his shoulders. “How many times do I have to tell you not to run people over? Strangers, of all people too. Strangers! And above all, leaking town affairs to them?”  
The first elf’s lip trembled and his face melted until he was bawling loudly.  
“Hey, hey, hey!” Kai growled and yanked the elves apart. “No strangling each other! You.” She pointed to the crying elf. “Stop crying. You.” She pointed to the second elf, who was red-faced and had steam rising from her ears. “Tell me what’s going on.”  
“It’s Elfheim’s matter,” the second elf snapped. “Nothing major enough to concern strangers with, anyway.”  
“What’s this about though?” Ariella pressed. “I’m genuinely curious. This one’s been saying that the prince has been asleep for years. That doesn’t sound like ‘nothing major’ to me.”  
“It’s super major!” the first elf piped in, hiccupping.  
“It’s nothing!” the second insisted.  
“If she says it’s nothing, it’s probably nothing,” Gluten groaned from against the wall. “This prince of theirs probably just ate something wrong and needed to sleep whatever it was off.”  
“For years?” Kai asked incredulously.  
Ash sat up, checking around her to make sure there were no other elves coming to run her over, and pulled both elves towards her. “You can tell us anything. Even if it’s not major enough to affect anyone outside of Elfheim, it sounds like it’s been going on for years, and you haven’t been able to figure it out yet. Maybe we could help.”  
The second elf grumbled and glared pointedly at the ground. The first elf tugged at her sleeve urgently. She yanked her arm away and grumbled, and he sighed and turned to Ash.  
“Our prince has been asleep for as long as anyone can remember. The court elves have tried calling healers from all over the world to help, but nothing has worked so far. Now that the ferries for both the Aldean Sea and the channels to Crescent Lake have stopped, we can’t send for healers at all. I just don’t know what we can do…”  
The second elf hung her head and scuffed at the ground. “As I said, this isn’t something that I think pulling outsiders into will solve,” she muttered. “Every healer over the past years that has been consulted, with the exception of our royal healer, has been an outsider. The situation’s getting desperate though, I’m willing to admit. The prince was meant to become the elf king, but what will happen to us now? The healers stopped coming because the ferries stopped working. Now, we can’t even get back in touch with the rest of the world if we wanted to, because the prince was in charge of everything. At this point, Elfheim has become a ghost town in terms of trade and travel because we relied on the prince so much for everything, and that’s affecting everything else. We can’t function as a part of the world or even as our own little society without our prince.”  
“Please!” the second elf pleaded. “Help our prince!”  
He latched onto Ariella’s robe and glanced up at her, Kai and Ash pleadingly. The three looked at each other at a loss for what to do.  
A hand landed on Ash’s shoulder and Gluten came to stand next to her and cleared her throat. “It’s been a long day. I know the prince’s excessive sleeping is urgent, but so is our lack of sleep. We’ll probably be better equipped mentally and emotionally to figure out what to do after we all get a good night’s sleep.”  
“I second that,” Ariella agreed. “It’s late. We should all go to bed for now. If the prince has been sleeping for this long, I don’t think he’s going to go anywhere.”

“So what do we do, then?” Ash asked.  
She and Kai sat on the floor in the lobby of the inn with a candle. Gluten’s snoring echoed softly from the cracked door of their room, punctuated by the clinking of potion flasks and coins as Ariella made inventory.  
Kai sighed and put her chin in her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where to start on this one. What about you?”  
“Me neither,” Ash murmured back. “I don’t feel good doing nothing though.”  
“You can’t be thinking of helping them, Ash,” Kai said. “What could you possibly do?”  
“I could ask around,” Ash pointed out. “Get more information. Problem-solving always started with investigating the problem.”  
“If that were the case,” Kai replied, “then the elves wouldn’t have this problem. They’ve called probably dozens of healers from around the world to come help them. You’d think someone would’ve thought of playing detective already.”  
“Okay.” Ask crossed her arms. “Do you have a better idea?”  
Kai blinked. “Yes, actually. We should get back on the ship, find another way west, and take care of the Crystals one by one.”  
Ash stared at her. “That’s a terrible idea.”  
“How?” Kai asked. She sat up and leaned forward, eyes flashing defensively. “I literally just laid out exactly what we’ve been planning to do from day one. Travel, restore the Crystals, save the world. How is any of that a terrible idea?”  
“I don’t mean saving the world or the Crystals are a terrible idea,” Ash tried to clarify. “But we just stumbled into a town with people in need. We can’t just ignore them.”  
“We can’t just make a detour every single time we meet a town in distress,” Kai countered. “You heard the king, and the prophecy. If we don’t restore the crystals, the world will fall to the darkness forever. At that point, I don’t think it matters whether or not one elf kingdom has a king or not. I agree that this whole sleeping prince situation sucks, but ultimately it’s not a priority.”  
“What about Pravoka, then?” Ash asked. “Wasn’t that a bit of a detour? I didn’t hear you arguing like you are now when I suggested we help them. You even agreed with me.”  
“That was different,” Kai snapped, struggling to keep her voice low. “We needed to get south, and Pravoka was the only accessible city with a running ferry. We needed to defeat those pirates to get ourselves south.”  
“And how is this any different? We need to get to Crescent Lake to ask for help somehow. Maybe the elves know a way there that we haven’t figured out yet. They might tell us if we help them.”  
Kai scoffed. “I highly doubt that. I still think it’d be a waste of time. They’ve spent years and resources trying to find a solution, and nothing has worked. What makes you think we, a foursome of amateur adventurers, can do anything that famous healers from around the world haven’t thought to try yet? We’re better off leaving and finding another way to Crescent Lake. The more time we waste here, the more this darkness or whatever it is we’re supposed to be fighting grows. I’d like to get on that and stop it soon, before it gets to be too much to handle. And who knows? Maybe once we fix that, this’ll fix itself automatically.”  
“We can’t just leave them here though,” Ash protested. “Say we find another way to Crescent Lake, and learn more about the prophecy and how to restore the Crystals. We then go on to save the world from the darkness. What if whatever’s knocked the prince out isn’t fixed by the Crystals being restored? And if that’s the case, what if by the time we’re back to help the elves, it’s been another ten years? Adventures like this don’t happen overnight. We might get back and find out that while we were gone, something worse than a case of sleepy royals happened to Elfheim? Something like an invasion or epidemic. No offense to the elves, but I think they’re kind of brainless without their leader. I don’t think they can last another ten years waiting for us to save the rest of the world.”  
“They’ll be fine,” Kai grumbled. “Ash, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that you can’t solve everyone’s problems for them. You’ll run yourself to death that way. Just because you’re one of the saviors of the world doesn’t mean you’re supposed to stop and put everything down every time someone comes to you crying ‘save me!’ You have to pick and choose these things or you’re not even going to be able to keep yourself safe, much less the world. You know that, right? Or did you lose your understanding of that along with your memories?”  
Ash bristled. “What about you? I know you’re saying that we should focus on restoring the Crystals and saving the world as a whole, but I think that being a hero is more than just fulfilling prophecies. We have to help the people of the world wherever they need help, not just run away and ignore problems every time they come up. We can’t just leave town every time something happens.”  
“Whatever,” Kai snapped and stood up. “Do what you want. I’m not wasting my time solving every little thing that comes up.”  
“Right back at you,” Ash muttered. “I’m not leaving until I figure out how to wake up the elf prince. I’m going to take my time solving all the little things that seriously impact people’s lives, instead of some distant prophesied mission that could take years to complete anyway.”  
Kai glared at Ash. “You don’t think this Crystals and darkness business is serious, do you?”  
“What?” Ash sputtered. “No, I didn’t say that! I just think it can wait compared to--”  
“I’d like to remind you,” Kai cut her off, “that there are real-world consequences for the Crystals not working. The world hasn’t seen an airship in hundreds of years because the crazy-ass winds make air travel too dangerous most of the time. According to at least five people in every town that I’ve ever been to, the area near the Devil’s Tail over to the west is literally dying, and hasn’t been able to provide food in years. The seas are so unpredictable that sailing crews don’t go out anymore. Why do you think Bikke and his crew holed up in Pravoka? Tell me now, do you think this can wait?”  
Ash stifled a growl and opened her mouth to answer. Kai held up her hand and stood up. “Forget it. Tomorrow, I’m looking for another way to Crescent Lake. If I have to go save the world by myself while my supposed companions put it off, then so be it.”  
She stormed out of the inn, the door slamming behind her hard enough to make Ash flinch.

Kai didn’t come back to the inn.  
Gluten and Ariella nervously poked at their food as they watched Ash aggressively shoveling and gnashing at hers at breakfast the next morning. She glared up at both of them. “What’re you doing? We have a big day. Eat already.”  
Ariella hesitantly shrugged and picked up her toast to nibble at it. Gluten pushed hers towards Ariella and scooted away from the table. “It’s okay. I’m full.”  
She scuttled out of the room, stopping to grab her spellbook and the wallet and muttering something about spell-shopping. Ash threw up her hands. “What? Did I say something?”  
“Nothing,” Ariella said and patted her shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. “So, we’re helping the elves, right?”  
“That’s the plan,” Ash muttered. “I’m going to ask around town and get some more information about what’s going on. I was thinking of going to the palace and asking. I figured that since the prince is there, the guards and healer might know more than the townspeople.”  
“Are we sure that’s going to work?” Ariella asked. “The girl elf we met yesterday was super hesitant to say anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the town wasn’t.”  
“It’s worth a try,” Ash pointed out. Ariella nodded and shrugged in reply.  
They quickly finished their food and left the inn. Ariella waved goodbye to Ash and ducked into one of the black magic shops as they passed by. “I’m going to grab the wallet from Gluten before she buys out the store,” she explained. “If we’re really taking on this sleeping elf prince problem, we should get healing spells besides Cure just in case.”  
Ash nodded and continued on through the town.  
“Excuse me,” she said, stopping an elf woman near the cemetary. “Can you tell me how to get to the castle?”  
“You go up that path and take a left,” the elf woman said, pointing to the far side of town. “Why do you need to know?”  
“I want to talk to the town healer,” Ash explained. “My friends and I heard about the prince as soon as we got here. We don’t feel right just leaving without trying to help.”  
The elf woman pressed her mouth in a hard line. “I’m surprised anyone even tries anymore. It’s been about five years since the prince went to sleep, and we’ve tried everything on this side of the Aldean Sea. You’d best be on your way. No use wasting your time here.”  
“No, please,” Ash insisted. “I want to try and help. Can you tell me what you know?”  
The elf woman sighed and rubbed her face. “I don’t know much. Only the people in the palace know all the details. Here’s what I think, though. No one knows where Astos, king of the dark elves, has gone. Everyone in town suspects that it’s got something to do with that.”  
“Astos?” Ash asked.  
“The dark elves split off from Elfheim centuries ago,” the elf woman explained. “There was a rebellion to try and overthrow the ruling family, but they failed and fled into the forest to escape punishment. They’re like bandits now, running with the goblins and terrorizing town from time to time. Usually, dark elf raids on town are organized and lead by Astos, their current king.”  
“What does that have to do with the prince, though?”  
“The last raid was five years ago, around the time our prince went to sleep,” the elf woman continued. “Since then, Astos hasn’t sent any goblins or dark elves to harass us. Some think of it as a blessing, but most of us are terrified with the prince’s absence. I fear that Astos and his minions are behind the prince’s coma, and now they’re hiding in wait for us. They know we’re useless without the guidance of our prince. It’s only a matter of time until we must give in and bend to them to survive. One way to end this would be to take out Astos and leave the dark elves leaderless, but we don’t know where Astos holds base. We haven’t been able to find out where, either. If you want to know more, the palace residents might know more.”  
Ash nodded, turning up the path to the castle. “Got it. Thanks for your help.”  
The two guards, one tall, one short, at the palace gate straightened up as Ash approached. “You! What do you want?”  
“I’m hoping to see the healer,” Ash called out. “My friends and I heard about the situation with the prince and wanted to see what we could do to help.”  
The guards looked her up and down. “What could you do to help?” the short one asked. “You’re clearly not a healer.”  
“I heard about Astos,” Ash said. “I can’t cure the prince and I don’t know all the details so I can’t put two and two together, but at least I can take out Astos and the dark elves. That’ll take some pressure off of you while you look for a cure.”  
The guards looked at each other. The tall one shrugged and waved Ash in. “Talk to some of the people in the palace if you want to know more. The healer’s so focussed on trying to heal the prince he hardly leaves the prince’s chambers.”  
Ash nodded and hurried inside. She stopped a servant passing through the hall. “Excuse me. Can you tell me about the prince?”  
“The prince?” the servant said. “He’s been asleep.”  
“Do you know why?”  
“Why?” the servant repeated. “He’s cursed, probably.”  
“Why do you say that?” Ash asked.  
“Why?” the servant sighed. “It’s not something we’re really supposed to talk about with outsiders, but… during the last raid on the town, the dark elves broke into the castle.”  
“Isn’t that expected, though?” Ash asked.  
“Expected? Not really,” the servant said. “Usually they just terrorize the town. Last time was different, though. The dark elves and their goblin friends attacked the town, as usual. While they were doing that, the dark elf king, Astos, stole into the castle and placed a curse on our prince. Then Astos carted away the castle’s treasures! It was totally unexpected!”  
“How do you know it’s the curse that made the prince go to sleep, though?” Ash asked.  
“How do we know?” the servant repeated. “We figured. The prince somehow slept through the whole raid, and didn’t wake up even when we brought all the pots and pans from the kitchen and banged them in his room. All of the healers we called couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and someone finally suggested that he was probably cursed during the raid. We’ve been working off of that ever since.”  
“I see,” Ash replied. “May I speak to your healer?”  
The servant shrugged and pointed down the hall. “Down that way and to the right. The door to the prince’s chambers is on the right. I’ll take you.”  
They turned a corner to stand in front of a huge set of double doors. The servant opened the door without knocking and stuck his head in. “Hey, Healer. There’s an outsider here to see about the prince.”  
He reached behind him and propelled Ash into the room. The healer blinked up from the bed, where the prince’s blond head peeked out from under a mountain of covers, at Ash. “Who are you?”  
“I’m Ash,” said Ash. “My friends and I were passing through when we heard about the prince. Is there anything we can do to help?”  
The healer sighed and stood up, hands on her hips and gazing down at the prince tiredly. “I’m sure you’ve heard about Astos, so I won’t bore you with details. The prince has slept under Astos's curse for five years now. There must be some medicine that can rouse the sleeping… but where? And what? I’ve been making potion after potion for years, and nothing has worked.”  
She turned to Ash. “At this point, I’ll try anything. Even if we have to beat the prince back to his senses, I’ll accept it.”  
Ash shook her head vigorously. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary yet. I do have an idea though. If potions haven’t worked on him, maybe the problem lies with Astos? Maybe he’s held the curse in power all these years, and it’s not one that you can break with a potion. I could try defeating Astos, and maybe the prince will wake up.”  
The healer thought for a minute. Finally, she nodded. “Let’s try it.”

“So you signed us up to go fight some superelf,” Gluten said, staring at Ash.  
“Basically,” Ash shrugged.  
Gluten groaned and flopped onto the bed. “Why?”  
Ariella patted Gluten’s shoulder and sighed. “While I’m not opposed to helping the elves, I’m not sure how I feel about taking on a major monster on the off-chance that it might wake the prince up.”  
“What else can we try, though?” Ash pointed out. “We can’t really ask around about a way to Crescent Lake right now. Everyone’s too preoccupied with the prince, and all modes of transportation to any town is shut down right now because of that.”  
“We could still sail directly to Crescent Lake, couldn’t we?” Gluten tried. “We don’t even have to dock properly. Just drop anchor somewhere close by and use the lifeboat to get to shore.”  
“We can’t do that,” Ariella grumbled. “Even if we found a place to lay anchor, we’d still have to get through the channels near Mount Gulg. The area there is still suffering the after-affects of an eruption a couple years ago, and the only safe place to get through is from the other side of the continent. We also can’t fit the lifeboat through the channels. They’re too shallow, and too narrow.”  
“So the only way to get there is still by crossing over to the western continent, near Melmond, and hoping we can get another ship there,” Ash finished. “Which means, we should go fight this Astos and help the elves so that they can help us.”  
Gluten groaned. “Can’t we wait until Kai comes back? We’ll stand a better chance if she’s here.”  
“What do you mean?” Ash challenged. “There’s three of us. I’m fine with my axe, and you’ve got your fire spells, and Ariella knows holy and healing magic. We’ll be fine.”  
“Hold on,” Gluten cut in. “You want us to go into battle short one person? Ash, that’s suicide.”  
“No, it won’t be,” Ash snapped. “Yes, it would be better if Kai were here, but she’s not right now. She stormed out last night, and I don’t know where she went. She’ll probably come back when she feels like it.”  
“So she’s gone, and you don’t know where she is,” Gluten pressed. “Ash, what the heck? She could be dead right now, and you wouldn’t even know it.”  
Ash opened her mouth to retort. Ariella clapped one hand over her mouth and the other on Gluten’s shoulder. “Okay, both of you, stop. Arguing isn’t going to find Kai, and it’s not going to get us anywhere except for falling apart. Let’s just get this over with and save the prince, then we can go find Kai. She’s handled herself pretty well in the past, and she can handle herself until we find her. If anything, she’s probably gone looking for another way to Crescent Lake. Once she sees that there’s no way there from this side of the continent, she’ll turn around and come back. I don’t think anything’s going to happen to her until then. In the meantime, we can go ahead and take on this option and help out the elves.”  
The two others fell silent and nodded. Ariella removed her hands. “Great. As for where to start looking for Astos, the elves haven’t been able to track him down. However, one said something about a creepy castle keep to the west of here. He didn’t get the chance to explore it, but they’ve searched the rest of the forest. We could try there first.”  
“Sounds like a plan,” Ash agreed. “Let’s get going.”  
They gathered their gear and headed for the door. Ash picked up her axe as Ariella slid it across the table to her. “Thanks.”  
“You and I have words when we get back,” Ariella snapped. “And then, _if_ Kai comes back, you and her are having words. I refuse to stick around if I’m going to be surrounded by bickering imbeciles, Warriors of Light or not. You got that?”  
Ash nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”

In hindsight, they should’ve restocked on potions instead of rushing out.  
Without Kai, battles became ten times harder. Ash found herself struggling against groups of five goblins by herself, or getting caught in Gluten’s new Fira spell. Ariella quickly depleted her mana and went through half the potion supply within a few hours.  
By the time twilight rolled around, they’d given up trying to heal completely in between battles.  
Gluten opened a potion and took a few sips before handing it to Ash. “Here. Drink the rest.”  
“I’m okay,” Ash panted, pushing it back with shaky hands. “You need it. I’m just tired.”  
Gluten hesitated, then cautiously took another sip.  
Ariella pulled the rest of the supplied out of the back and laid them out on the grass. “Three potions, one ether, one phoenix down, two antidotes. And the tent. We really need to start picking our battles more carefully if we want to last as far as the keep.”  
Gluten and Ash nodded. Ariella uncorked and handed Gluten the ether. “Save half of it for me, okay?”  
Gluten nodded and downed half of it. “How much further do we have?”  
“Another day, at least,” Ariella said. “We’re going to have to spend the night somewhere.”  
She ignored Ash and Gluten’s groans and packed up. “Come on. We should keep walking.”  
A rustling noise behind them had them scrambling to stand back to back, weapons drawn. Ash tensed and raised her axe higher as she counted six pairs of eyes staring out at her from the bushes. “Warg wolves. Be careful.”  
Angular snouts and red bodies phased out of the bushes, and the warg wolves circled around them, snarling. Ash elbowed the two mages behind her. “I’ll attack. When you guys see an opening, make a run for it.”  
Ariella took a shaky breath and nodded. “Okay. You’ll be fine?”  
“I’ll be right behind you,” Ash assured. “Gluten?”  
“Fira!”  
A wall of flames leapt out from Ash’s left and snaked towards the warg wolves. Ash jumped aside. “Gluten, what the heck!”  
Gluten shoved her and Ariella. “Go!”  
Ariella took off, and Ash grabbed Gluten by the collar and charged after her. A warg wolf leapt at her side, and she swung her axe. The momentum lodged the blade in the warg wolf’s ribs and it howled, falling and yanking the blade out of Ash’s hand. She cursed and kept running, shifting Gluten under one arm.  
Ahead of her, Ariella had managed to pull herself into a tree and was reaching down to her. “Give me Gluten!”  
Ash nodded and shifted Gluten again. There was a sudden yelp behind her and Gluten disappeared from under her arm. She whipped around to see the remaining five warg wolves, charred but very much alive, pouncing on Gluten as she screamed and tried to shield herself.  
Ash threw a kick into the face of the one directly on top of Gluten and threw herself against another. “Get up and run for the tree!”  
Gluten sat up and shook her head. Her eyes widened as she turned to look at Ash. “Look out!”  
Ash turned around to see nothing but a mouthful of teeth and a flash of red fur before it slammed her into the ground, and everything disappeared except for the weight of five warg wolves pressed onto her body and their teeth against her arms and legs.


	6. Castles and Caves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kai has a change of heart and catches up with the party in the nick of time. They also meet a questionable man in a castle, who sends them underground to look for a crown. Fireballs, lightning, surprise monsters and inventory errors ensue.

The rocking of the ship and the hot afternoon sun on Kai’s back should’ve been relaxing, but instead left her feeling oddly sick. Sweat and salt spray left a sticky residue on her face and arms and glued her shirt to her body, and the sun and sea spray had left her skin raw and burned.  
The wind had suddenly stopped a few hours ago, leaving her stranded in the middle of the ocean. She’d tried staying in the cabin, but the humidity had been just as unbearable as the heat above deck. At least outside, the air wasn’t as stale.  
Thinking about the fight with Ash left a bad taste in Kai’s mouth. In the year that they’d spent traveling together, they’d had their fair share of squabbles, but had never fought like that before. Never once had they spoken to hurt. Ash had always been sensitive about not knowing her past, as little as she liked to express it. Kai should’ve known better than to make a personal jab at that, and yet she’d gone and done it anyway. Ash’s hurt expression lingered in her mind, and it was a stab and twist at Kai’s heart every time she thought about the mental image.  
Kai sat up and grumbled, wincing as her burned skin crackled a little. The sails were useless without wind, but maybe she could muscle her way back to shore using the rudder as a makeshift paddle. It would probably take hours, but it was better than sitting in the middle of the ocean, not knowing if the next time the winds came, a storm would come with it.  
The steering wheel creaked as Kai hauled it back and forth, grunting and sweating. The ship barely turned, much less moved forward noticeably. Kai gritted her teeth and threw her body weight into the wheel until she was a sweaty, salty, wheezing mess draped over it. She flopped to the deck and screamed in frustration.  
The other three were probably either asking around town or out in the wilderness, running in circles while looking for a solution to Elfheim’s sleepy prince problem. Ariella would probably insist on asking around town first and getting her bearings before heading out. Gluten might not even be out and about, and instead could be holed up at the inn. She always struck Kai as more of the type to keep her head down and out of trouble, even though she always ended up in it. Kai definitely wasn’t worried about those two.  
Mostly, it was Ash that had Kai boiling with anxiety. The warrior was more than capable of holding her own in a fight, but she had a habit of acting before thinking for as long as she’d known her. Kai swore that if she hadn’t been there to pull Ash out of half of the stuff she got herself into, she’d have been eaten up a long time ago, natural fighting ability or not.  
Kai grumbled as worry welled up in her chest and rolled onto her stomach. A seagull skidded to a stop on the deck in front of her and squawked. She looked up at it, sighing. “Are you here to laugh at me? Yes, stupid me. What am I thinking, trying to sail an entire ship by myself.”  
The seagull stuck its beak into its tail feathers to preen. Kai pushed herself up onto her elbows. “Ash, I know, wouldn’t think of it that way, though. Knowing her, she’d probably just think of this as an oversized sailboat and figure out a way to get it moving besides hauling ass on the rudder.”  
The seagull pulled its head out to look at her before returning to preening. Kai sighed. “That’s usually how she looks at every big problem. She always compares it to something smaller. I guess it makes it easier for her to process if she’s negating the challenge and making it less intimidating. Ahhhh, that’s probably what she’s doing with Elfheim’s sleepy prince, isn’t it? ‘It’s basically a case of major oversleeping. No biggie. We’ll have it figured out by dinner.’ That’s probably why she thought it’d be a good idea to handle it right then and there.”  
She rolled over and grumbled again, startling the seagull, who squawked indignantly and hopped away. “But what about the Crystals? There’s no way you can scale that down. It’s the world at stake. The world! It’s not like you can break that down to being basically four shiny rocks that need to be fixed.”  
The seagull blinked at her and pecked at the deck. Kai sighed. “I don’t think I’m wrong about that. I’m definitely not wrong. This is a serious issue, and it needs to be taken seriously. Then again, taking it this seriously is probably what made me think running off in the middle of the night and trying to take on the Crystals by myself was a good idea. And now I’m stuck out in the middle of the ocean. Alone. No way of getting back because the wind could be gone for another month or two. Guess I’ll just die, then.”  
She closed her eyes and crossed her arms behind her head to wait for the inevitable death by sun-cooking. “I really shouldn’t have left them.”  
Behind her, the seagull cried out and flapped its wings. Kai frowned as the wind from the flapping blew over her face. “I appreciate you trying to help, but your wings aren’t going to produce enough wind to get me back to shore.”  
The flapping faded and Kai sighed. “Least you could do is keep me company while I roast, though.”  
Another breeze blew over her and she opened her eyes and rolled over to look at the seagull. There was nothing but a single tail feather tumbling across the deck in the wind.  
The wind. Kai had been so distracted by her own misery she hadn’t realized there was a breeze rapidly picking up.  
“It’s back!” she yelled and immediately stumbled to her feet and ran for the ropes holding the sails. They unfurled with a snap, and she barely had time to secure the rope again before they filled out and the ship was jolted backwards in the direction of Elfheim. Kai ran for the steering wheel and yanked it hard enough to send things sliding across the deck as it wheeled around sharply. A couple of barrels turned over and rolled out of the gap in the railing into the sea, but she couldn’t care less as the ship sped back towards her party.

“Excuse me!”  
The innkeeper yelped as Kai nearly ran into her desk, heaving for air. “Y-yes?”  
“Have you seen a warrior, a black mage, and a white mage anywhere around town?” Kai gasped. “They came in sometime last night and should still be around town.”  
“Oh, those three?” the innkeeper said, regaining her composure. “They packed up and left this morning. Didn’t say where they were going.”  
“Seriously?” Kai wheezed. “Nothing at all? Did you overhear anything about where they might be headed?”  
“They were asking around a lot about the prince,” the innkeeper said. “And they want to go after Astos. They figured out that he’s the one behind the prince’s coma, so they’re going to hunt him out.”  
“Who’s Astos?” Kai asked. “Nevermind that, anyone else who might know exactly where they’re headed?”  
“Ask the elf on the northeast side of town,” the innkeeper replied. “He usually hangs around the graveyard. He travels a lot, so he might know something I don’t.”  
“Thanks,” Kai yelled over her shoulder, already halfway out the door.  
The graveyard was empty, save for an older elf man cleaning one of the graves. Kai barely registered “Here lies Link” on the headstone as she tapped on the elf man’s shoulder. “Excuse me.”  
The elf man startled with a small noise and turned to face her, dropping his garden shears to straighten his glasses. “Oh! Yes? What is it?”  
“I’m looking for a warrior, a black mage, and a white mage,” Kai explained, “or any one of the three. They came to town last night, and should’ve still been here this morning.”  
“Well,” the elf man mumbled in thought, “I didn’t see the black mage or warrior, but the white mage girl did come asking about hiding spots for Astos and his dark elves. I told her a few places I knew of, and she went on her way.”  
“Okay, where?” Kai pressed.  
“In a journey I once took to the west,” the elf man said, “I wandered into an ancient castle. Not a soul could be found inside--and the whole place gave me the creeps--so I got out of there as fast as I could. I also stumbled upon a marsh cave, a little way south of the castle. The place was teeming with monsters. I couldn’t stand the smell, so I hurried out of there as well. I believe your friends headed off for the castle, though, if you need a starting point to start your search.”  
“Ancient castle to the west it is,” Kai said. “Can I get directions there, please?”

The trees and bushes rustled as Kai sped through the dark forest, a new bag of potions clinking on her back. The shopkeeper had been hard to convince to give her more, so she’d swiped a few phoenix down on the sly, just in case. Once she found the party, they would need to talk about splitting the wallet among them instead of having one communal wallet. It would make shopping a lot easier.  
She resisted the urge to call out to the other three. She couldn’t risk attracting monsters to her as well. There was no way she could take on an ogre or a pack of warg wolves on her own. So instead, she hurried through the forest with as little sound as possible, holding a torch in one hand and beating through the bushes with the other.  
A scream somewhere to the right had her skidding to a stop. The screams continued, and Kai was able to recognize it as Ariella’s voice. In the background, she could hear loud growling and snapping. She took off as fast as she could in that direction, forgetting to stay stealthy and quiet. “Ariella!”  
She emerged in a small clearing. Ariella was seated in a tree, hurling empty potion bottles at a gang of five warg wolves crowding at the base of the tree and snapping at her robes and feet. On the ground, Ash and Gluten lay unmoving and covered in blood. Gluten’s robes were in tatters and Ash’s arms and legs were gnawed beyond recognition. Kai was grateful that she was face-down so that she couldn’t see the extent of the damage there.  
The warg wolves turned at the crackling sounds from Kai crashing out of the bushes and growled at her. Ariella looked up as the warg wolf jumping up to snap at her turned its attention away, and her face fell in relief when she saw Kai. “Kai! You’re here!”  
The warg wolves growled louder and one took a step forward. Kai waved a torch at them threateningly. “Back!”  
The wolves leapt back and snarled. Kai glared them down and waved the torch again. “What happened?”  
“We ran out of potions,” Ariella sniffled. “The monsters are way stronger when there’s only three people in the party, and we should’ve thought about that before we left.”  
“You really should’ve,” Kai snapped. “No time to worry about it now, though. Did you have a chance to visit the white magic shop? Pick up any new spells?”  
“Yeah,” Ariella said shakily. “I got Cura and Diara.”  
“Do you have mana left?” Kai asked. Ariella shook her head, and Kai chucked an ether bottle at her, barely dodging one of the warg wolves’ jaws coming at her arm. She yelled at it sharply, startling it back into a crouch, and kept speaking to Ariella without looking up. “Drink this. I need you to cast Diara on my cue.”  
“They’re not undead,” Ariella protested. “It’s not going to do any damage—”  
“Just do it,” Kai cut her off and pulled a buckler out of her bag, not breaking eye contact with the warg wolves. “On my cue.”  
Ariella nodded and downed the ether. The color returned to her face and her hands glowed as she rubbed them together vigorously. “Ready when you are.”  
Kai nodded and strapped the buckler to her arm. “Now!”  
Ariella’s spell rang out into the forest, and Kai ducked away from the sudden rays of white light and angled the buckler directly at the warg wolves. They howled in confusion, and Kai charged. She skidded to a stop next to Gluten’s mauled body and hauled her to the tree, where Ariella reached down to pull her up. Kai waited until she had the body most of the way up before turning to face the warg wolves. They were still disoriented, but had recovered enough to face Kai, snapping and snarling. Kai cursed and brandished her torch at them.  
Ash lay just off to the side, still face down. Even if there were no wolves in between them, Kai couldn’t get to her with enough time to feed her a phoenix down before the wolves landed on her too. Even if Ariella revived Gluten, the two mages alone could only hold off the warg wolves for so long. That, and they couldn’t stay in the tree forever. She’d have to try something else.  
She slowly took off her bag and set it against the tree. “Ariella, I’m going to need you to come down.”  
“What?” Ariella asked. “Why?”  
“I’m going to hold the wolves off,” Kai explained. “Between the shield, the torch, and my speed, I can hold my own against all five of them for a bit. While I’m distracting them, I want you to jump out of the tree and make a run for Ash with my bag. There’s three phoenix down from the ship and five or six potions in there. Don’t ask how I got the money for those. I didn’t. But that’s not important right now. Once you get her up and running, tell her to come help me. Where’s her axe?”  
“We lost it,” Ariella said.  
“That’s okay,” Kai replied. “My scimitar’s in the bag. Okay, now!”  
She scuffed the ground as hard as she could, sending a spray of dirt at the warg wolves. They jumped backwards, snarling, then one by one started leaping at Kai. She knocked one away from her with the buckler and danced out of the way of another, choreographing her steps to lead further and further away from the tree. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ariella slip out of the tree and reach for the bag. She responded by banging the torch against the buckler. “Here, ye mutts!”  
The largest warg wolf growled and leapt at her. If he hadn’t been coming directly at her, Kai figured he could’ve easily cleared her height with that jump. She stepped to the side and brought the torch down on the back of his neck with as much of her body weight behind it as she could muster. A satisfying crack and a yelp, and the warg wolf fell, twitching in shock with his neck bent at an unnatural angle.  
Two came at her from opposite sides. Kai cursed for letting herself get surrounded and ducked. The wolves crashed into each other in a flurry of teeth and claws and tumbled to the ground. Kai redirected another wolf coming at her from a different angle on top of the two with her buckler arm. The pile of warg wolves writhed and cried as they bit and clawed each other, trying to untangle. Kai pulled an ether from her belt and hurled it at them. The delicate glass bottle shattered, spilling the ether all over them. Kai swung the torch, and the warg wolves’ cries turned to screams as their ether-soaked fur went up in flames.  
Kai breathed a sigh of relief as the three warg wolves scurried off into the forest in a stream of fire and smoke. She turned to check on Ariella and Ash, only to be met with a faceful of teeth and saliva. She threw up her buckler just in time to keep the fifth warg wolf from biting her nose off, and they crashed to the ground to the sound of Ariella’s screaming and the crunch of glass somewhere to the side. Kai struggled to keep the warg wolf off of her as she frantically felt with her free hand at the broken shards of the ether bottle, wincing each time she landed on a shard too hard. Her fingers finally closed around a surprisingly intact neck, still corked, and rammed the broken end into the warg wolf’s side, yelling. The warg wolf screamed and writhed on top of her. Kai stabbed it again and again until the writhing subsided enough for her to kick it off of her and back against the tree, panting and shaking.  
The warg wolf stood shakily, belly dripping with red. It glared at Kai, growling and drooling blood. She held up the buckler and the bottle as threateningly as she could and glared back. “Come and get me, then, you little [AHEM LANGUAGE].”  
The warg wolf lunged. Kai closed her eyes and braced herself for the impact. It never came. Somewhere in front of her face, the warg wolf yelped, and she was sprayed with something warm as something heavy thudded at her feet.  
Slowly, she opened her eyes to see the steel blade of the scimitar laced with blood. She followed it back to a hand and arm, still mangled but in significantly better shape, then to the completely destroyed but very much alive face of Ash. She let herself fall against the tree and sighed. “Oh thank the Crystals, it worked out.”  
Ash chuckled weakly and fell to her knees. Kai immediately reached down to keep her from faceplanting. “Hey, hey. Don’t move too much. You were dead a few minutes ago.”  
Ariella appeared with an unfinished potion in her hand and shoved the mouth of the bottle into Ash’s mouth. “Finish your potion!”  
Ash downed the potion and burped. “Now I know why Gluten reacted the way she did when she died. That phoenix down really packs a punch.”  
The relief in Kai quickly boiled into something else and she landed a punch across Ash’s jaw hard enough to send her tumbling onto her side. Ariella yelped and threw an extra potion at Kai. “Kai!”  
“You!” Kai exploded at Ash, who gripped her jaw tenderly on the ground at her feet. “I knew you were an impulsive idiot, but I trusted you not to be stupid enough to run off into the wilderness the first chance you get. I swear on the Crystals, I was gone for one day and somehow you get yourself and everyone else in the party killed! What kind of adventurer goes out before stocking up on restoratives first?”  
Ash stayed silent and still on the ground. Suddenly she surged upwards and Kai felt a blow to the bottom of her chin hard enough to rattle her teeth. She tumbled backwards onto the ground and hit her head hard enough to see stars. She blinked them away to see Ash towering over her angrily.  
“And what about you?” the warrior thundered. “What kind of adventurer just up and leaves the party in the middle of the night? No note, no word with the innkeeper, no nothing. Ariella and Gluten were worried sick about you! Ariella especially!”  
“And what about you?” Kai snapped back. “What did you think? I bet you were relieved, weren’t you? No more Kai to argue with about which route to take.”  
“Are you kidding me?” Ash said, voice going up an octave in frustration. “I was the most worried! I trust you on your own, but you were on your own! I seriously thought you were going to die by yourself, but it’s not like I can panic about where you are along with the other two and let the whole party stop functioning.”  
Kai opened her mouth to retort, and was cut off by Ariella yanking her up and Ash down by the collars to bang their heads together. They both helped in pain and turned to glare at her. “What was that for?!”  
Ariella glared at them both and crossed her arms. “Both of you are so stupid,” she grumbled. “I don’t know exactly what happened last night, but you two traveled together for ages before Gluten and I came into the picture. How could you let something like a disagreement split you up like that? Ash, Kai’s right. We shouldn’t have rushed into hunting down Astos without preparing first. But Kai, Ash’s right. What kind of party member just up and leaves in the middle of the night with no notice? Gluten legitimately thought you would die by yourself out there.”  
“But Ash said—” Kai started.  
“But Kai said—” Ash started.  
“No,” Ariella snapped. “We are not doing this right now. Whatever was said between you guys, you two need to work that out yourselves. I’m dead tired and I still have Gluten to raise from the dead, so I’m not listening to either of your whining right now.”  
She shoved another potion at Ash, turned pointedly and marched to where she’d pulled Gluten down and laid her on the ground, restoratives in hand.  
Ash and Kai glanced at each other awkwardly. Ash dropped her gaze to the ground and scuffed at a clump of grass with her foot. “Sorry for fighting with you.”  
Kai sighed. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have brought your memories into it. I know you’re prickly about that.”  
“It is what it is,” Ash shrugged. “I really didn’t like that, though.”  
Kai nodded. A long, awkward silence grew between them. Ash scuffed at the ground more, and Kai picked bits of fur and glass off of her hands.  
Finally, Ash cleared her throat. “I shouldn’t have accused you of running away from problems. I know you only run when you need to or feel like you need to.”  
“It’s fine,” Kai muttered. “You understand that, at least. I won’t leave you guys like that again though. Biggest mistake of my life.”  
Ash gestured to Ariella hovering over Gluten’s body with a potion ready and snickered. “Clearly.”  
Kai chuckled and pulled Ash in for a hug. “I’m sorry.”  
Ash squeezed her back. “It’s cool. You’re back now.”  
Gluten suddenly shot straight up, screaming, and was met with Ariella shoving the potion bottle into her mouth. She somehow kept screaming around the bottle until she’d emptied the whole thing, and pulled away to gasp for air. “[CENSORED] that was not fun. Oh hey, Kai! You’re back!”  
Kai laughed. “Yeah, I am. What’d I miss?”  
Let’s set up camp first,” Ariella said and pulled a tent out of her bag. “We can fill you in on the situation while we’re tucked in and cozy.”

“So, you really think this Astos guy is the key to breaking this curse?” Kai asked.  
They had made it through the forest without too many other issues. The half-rotten gates to the ancient castle loomed before them, and a foul smell wafted out. Kai shivered. Villains really needed to find other places to hide besides old, decrepit castles.  
Ash pushed at the door and the hinges creaked loudly as it opened into a wide hallway. “Most likely. The healer’s tried every potion in the book, and nothing’s worked so far. I figured we should try forcing the caster to release the curse, and see what happens.”  
She marched into the castle, and Kai and Ariella followed with Gluten dragging her heels behind them.  
A cluster of bats fell chattering from the ceiling and swooped upwards just before hitting the party in the face. Ariella and Gluten squeaked and grabbed onto Kai, who peeled them off. “It’s just bats. It’s not like they’re going to eat you alive.”  
“At least we don’t have to rack our brains navigating,” Ariella sighed. “Either we go down the hall, or we explore the room over there. Not too many options here.”  
“Let’s check the hallway first,” Kai suggested. “Most castles are built with the throne room either on the top floor or at the center of the building, or at the center of the top floor. Makes finding it easier.”  
“Great,” Ash said and marched forward.  
Gluten frowned. “What makes you think Astos is going to hide in the throne room?”  
Ash shrugged. “Because most villains set themselves up either on the top floor, the bottom floor, or the throne room if there’s only one floor in the building. Probably a power move if you ask me.”  
They approached the door and drew their weapons as quietly as possible. Kai held up her hand to carefully push open the door, and it flew open and slammed into the wall inside as Ash’s foot connected with it. She stormed in before Kai could say a word, sword drawn. “ASTOS!!”  
A terrible but far from evil shriek rang out from inside. Kai sighed and followed Gluten and Ariella after her.  
The throne room was spacious and lined with stone soldiers. It gave Kai the creeps, but there was no evil dark elf anywhere to be found in the throne room. Instead, curled up on the throne in an attempt to shy away from the glint of Kai’s scimitar in Ash’s hand was an old man in a green king’s robe. His face and clothes were covered in dirt and bits of guano, and his hands looked especially grimy as he held them up to shield himself from Ash.  
Kai took Ash by the wrists and dragged her back from the throne. The man warily sat back down, eyes wild and darting from one face to the next, and Kai knelt in front of him. “Excuse us for barging here. What’re you doing here by yourself?”  
“I was once the king of this castle,” said the man. “We used to be in partnership with Elfheim until the dark elves came. I was tricked by Astos, king of the dark elves, and now my castle has fallen into ruin. He’s stolen my crown, the symbol of my kingdom, and taken it to hide in the Marsh Cave to the south. Might you bring me the crown?”  
Ash shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I don’t see why not. We could beat up Astos while we’re at it.”  
Ariella nodded. “That would be good.”  
Gluten looked at the ground and shuffled her feet, but didn’t say anything.  
Ash nodded and sheathed the sword. “Alright, let’s get going.”  
“In whose name should we demand your crown?” Ariella asked.  
The king smiled. “King Sotsa, of the Western Keep.”

“Are we there yet?” Ash asked as she whacked away at the tall grass of the marsh.  
They’d been traveling for the better part of the day, and had luckily not had too many run-ins with monsters. In the distance, Kai could see and hear the ocean.  
She scanned the horizon and pointed to a clearing in the grass, where the ground seemed to sink in on itself. “Let’s check over there. I don’t see anything else that could be a cave, and we’re running out of land. More than likely, that’s the entrance right there.”  
“Yes,” Ash whispered happily and pumped her fist. A group of cobras sprang hissing out of the bushes at her, and she cut through all of them without so much as glancing over. “No more bushwhacking.”  
They stopped at the entrance to a tunnel opening into the ground. The damp smell of mildew and monster wafted out in warm waves, and Kai wrinkled her nose. “Lovely.”  
Ariella gagged and made a face. “We’re going in _there_?”  
Ash shrugged and took the bag from Ariella. “Kind of have to. Let’s go.”  
She hooked the bag over her neck and took off into the tunnel. Kai drew her sword and headed in after.  
Behind her, there was a shuffle, and Gluten straining. “Ariella, come on. We have to go in.”  
“Just go without me,” Ariella protested. “I’ll wait here.”  
Kai turned around to see Gluten dragging Ariella across the ground by one arm towards the tunnel. She stepped back towards them to grab onto the white mage’s other arm and help pull her up. “We can’t just leave you here at the entrance, you know. Besides, what’s there to be afraid of down there?”  
“Zombies?” Ariella suggested. “Ghouls? Mummies? Shadows? Other undead stuff?”  
“That’s what the light and fire spells is for,” Gluten pointed out. “Come on, we’re going to lose Ash.”  
Ariella kept shaking her head in protest but allowed Kai and Gluten to drag her deeper into the cave.  
The smell of mildew grew stronger as they reached the floor of the cave, and an especially strong wave wafted from one of the tunnels. Ariella gagged and turned green. “Please tell me this cave doesn’t go any deeper.”  
“It probably does,” Gluten grumbled. “Who’s ever heard of a cave that doesn’t reach at least three floors down?”  
“Hurry up!” Ash’s voice echoed from down the worst-smelling tunnel. “I found stairs!”  
The two mages both groaned, and Ariella dry-heaved. Kai re-tied her bandana around her nose and prodded them down the tunnel.  
Ash stood shoulder deep in a hole in the ground at the end of the tunnel, a torch in each hand. She ducked down to make room for Kai, revealing a ridiculously narrow set of steps leading downward. “There’s some rooms on this floor, but other than that nothing but bats and monsters. It’s a pretty small area, too. As long as we finish off any fights quickly, we’ll be fine. I didn’t really check for traps, though, so we need to watch where we’re stepping a little.”  
Kai took one of the torches and toe-ed her way down the steps gingerly. “We should be fine there, too. Goblins aren’t great at traps, and neither are undead.”  
There was a thud behind them, and Gluten splatted into a puddle at their feet. Ariella came off the steps and gingerly maneuvered around her. “That’s why you get shorter robes.”  
“No way,” Gluten snapped. “These were my mother’s.”  
Ash handed her torch to Ariella and pointed towards red sludge-covered doors sunken into the equally slimy walls of the cave. “Let’s start checking the rooms one by one. It’s got to be here somewhere. If we split up and look we might find it faster.”  
Kai and Ariella nodded and each turned down a different corridor. Gluten groaned, but summoned a small fireball in her hand and shuffled after Ash around a wall of slimy pillars.  
The door Kai picked was so stuck that she had to throw herself into it. The door groaned in protest and opened a crack. Kai backed up and hurled herself into the door again, and it gave way enough for her to squeeze into the room. A single chest sat in the corner of the room and she kicked it open, sighing in disappointment when it opened to reveal nothing but a dagger. She pulled it out of the sheath to inspect for rust and shoved it into her belt. “Any luck, guys?”  
“I found gil,” Ariella called from the other room. “Nothing else.”  
A loud bang came from somewhere else in the cave followed by the smell of burning sludge and Ash yelping a curse. There was some muffled clanking, then Gluten yelled, “I found some more gil and a sword!”  
“I’ll take that. No crown here, though,” Ash called out. “You guys?”  
“Nope,” Kai called back and squeezed back through the door. “Ari?”  
Ariella pried open her door and stepped out, wiping her hands on her robes in disgust. “Nope. Just gil.”  
Gluten and Ash appeared from around the corner and Ash handed Kai her scimitar and a bag of gil. “That’s it for this floor, though. Are we sure we’re in the right cave?”  
“We should check the other tunnel upstairs,” Kai said. “There’s only one cave like this as far as I know.”  
Ash nodded and shouldered her new broadsword. “Alright. Let’s go. There was another room down the other tunnel. Maybe that’ll be the crown.”  
She turned and started up the steps. Her head had barely disappeared to the floor above when she suddenly ducked back down and knocked over Ariella, who had come up the steps behind her. The torch in Ariella’s hand clattered to the ground and the two tumbled backwards into Gluten and Kai, who dropped her torch and barely held everyone up by digging her hands into the walls. “What? Why’d you back--oh holy Crystals!”  
A rotting green foot popped down through the entrance, followed by an entire ghoul tumbling down the steps. Everyone scrambled backwards as a few more ghouls and a couple of jaundiced zombies tumbled down after the first one. Ariella screamed and turned to cling to Kai and Gluten, trembling. Kai grunted with the effort of holding everyone’s weight and felt her hands slipping through the wall sludge. “Hey, let me get up front!”  
Ash waved her sword threateningly at the undead, cutting off one of the ghouls’ heads. It barely seemed to notice and the whole horde pressed right into Ash. She kicked one back and cut another head off, but otherwise did no damage. “It’s no use! They’re too strong!”  
From somewhere between Ariella and Kai, Gluten let out a frustrated growl and shoved her way out. She grabbed Ash and threw her aside, then rolled up her sleeves and rubbed her hands. Sparks and tiny flames sprung from her palms. “Fira!”  
She slammed her hands into the ground and fireballs leapt from her hands. They ricocheted off the ground and ceiling to hit each of the undead, where they quickly spread from flesh to clothing. The ghouls, hit first, let out inhuman noises and tried to run backwards, straight into the equally on-fire zombies. A thick, black smoke filled the floor, carrying the smell of burning, rotting flesh and wall sludge. Everyone coughed and blinked reflexive tears out of their eyes watched first the ghouls, then the zombies finally stopped running around and screaming and fell into a heap of smoking bones on the ground.  
Ash was the first to talk. “That was… wow. Thanks for that, Gluten.”  
Gluten gave a smoky, wheezy cough and stood to brush herself off. “Shall we get going?”  
Ariella nodded and pushed herself up, grabbing the torches and handing one to Ash. Kai sighed in relief and drew her scimitar to poke through the charred remains of the monsters. A glimmer of gold caught her eye and she immediately shoved her hand into the remains, ignoring the cries of disgust from the others.

By the time they stepped off another ridiculously narrow set of steps into the third floor of the cave, everyone was more put off by the smell of each other than the smell of the actual cave. The sheer number of ghouls and zombies in the cave had startled even Ash, who Kai had always taken to be the unshakable one of the group, and had only increased as animated and armed skeletons and bloodbones leapt out from the shadows. Through it all, Gluten and Ariella had fought their way through the endless hordes of undead with holy light and fire, setting the enemies, and anything covered in sludge on fire. Sometimes the wall sludge itself broke off in chunks to attack them and were equally blasted with Gluten’s fire. Once or twice, the fireballs hit nest sacks hidden in corners, sending waves of tarantulas and black widows streaming in all directions. The resulting choking black smoke and clouds of monster ashes settled on everyone’s shoulders and into clothing and equipment, mixing with the preexisting stench of sweat to create an odor that had everyone dry-heaving the rest of the way through the dungeon.  
Gluten chugged another ether and gave a loud burp. Ariella made a face and snatched the bag away before Gluten could take another. “Stop it. You’re going to leave us unprepared if you keep downing them like that.”  
“But I’m tired,” Gluten moaned. “Do you know how much mana I’ve used since we’ve been down here? I’m basically the one getting us through it, you know.”  
“Then stop casting spells every time we run into something,” Kai grumbled. “I only got us so many ethers. We don’t know what might be guarding the crown when we find it, so we need to leave some for backup. Ash and I can cut through enemies pretty quickly, so stop throwing yourself at every monster that comes our way.”  
Gluten pouted and retreated into her collar.  
Ash looked out at the rows of rooms lining the floor and sighed. “Well. Let’s start going through all of these, then.”  
Everyone groaned and wandered off to start breaking into rooms. Kai hissed as her foot bounced painfully off of the door she tried to kick open and she bent down to massage her ankle. “You know, Ash, if you still had your axe, this would be a million times easier.”  
Ash poked her head out of the next room and shrugged. “It’s still buried in some random warg wolf’s rib cage somewhere in the woods if you want to go look for it.”  
Kai rolled her eyes and turned back to the door. She rattled the knob, then gave up with a sigh. “Hey guys, some of the doors are locked.”  
Three calls of acknowledgement came from varying places of the floor. Kai moved on to the next room and wrestled the door open to find nothing. She sighed and stuck her head out. “Any luck, you guys?”  
“I found a cottage earlier,” Ash called back.  
“There was some more gil in the last room,” Gluten replied.  
“Someone left a phoenix down here,” Ariella shouted from further away.  
“Any crowns, though?” Kai asked.  
“Not that I can see,” Ash said, poking her head out from the next room.  
“I found a pretty bracelet,” Gluten offered, holding out a copper armlet from the door of another room for them to see.  
Suddenly Ariella screamed from the opposite side of the floor. Ash and Kai immediately leapt out into the tunnels and took off in the direction of the screams. Gluten tripped on her way out of the room she was in, and Ash yanked her up by her collar and dragged her along.  
The door to the room Ariella had been checking flew open and Ariella stumbled backwards out into the tunnels. Kai reached her first and yanked her out of the way as a huge scorpion shot out of the doorway after her. It turned to tower over them, hissing and clicking its claws. Kai drew her scimitar and stood over Ariella protectively. From behind her, Gluten let out a guttural choke followed by a scream and suddenly came flying overhead, slamming the scorpion in the face and knocking it backwards. Kai hurriedly shoved Ariella and herself into the slimy wall as Ash barreled through, sword drawn, and chopped through the scorpion’s middle. Its top half let out a long shriek as it toppled and slid down the tunnel, tripping Gluten just as she stood back up.  
Ash let out a long breath and turned to check on Kai and Ariella. “You guys good?”  
Both of them shook their heads and pointed behind her, screaming. “Behind you!”  
Ash turned around a little too casually, just in time to see four more scorpions emerging from the room, brandishing their giant stingers menacingly. She groaned and raised her sword. “Aw, [EXCUSE ME THIS IS A PG-13 WORK].”  
The scorpions lunged in unison, claws and stingers exposed. Ash kicked one into the wall, stunning it, and managed to cut her way through two more. The last one barely missed her with its claws but wheeled around to send her sprawling with its tail into the wall on top of Kai and Ariella. It came around and lunged at Ash, who leapt out of the way. Ariella shrieked and held up her hammer to try and shield herself as the scorpion came close enough for Kai to see the drops of green accumulating on the tip of its tail. Without thinking, she shoved Ariella out of the way, and the scorpion’s claws locked around her forearm. It’s stinger came overhead and stabbed into Kai’s arm, and she yelled in pain. From the side, Ariella brought her hammer down on the scorpion’s tail and back, crushing it and forcing it to let go. Kai yanked the stinger out and threw it to the side. Green liquid sprayed everywhere.  
A fireball flew down the tunnel to hit the last scorpion on the back of the neck, forcing it to rear up and free Ash from where it had pinned her against the floor. Ash took the opportunity to slice upwards, cleaving it in half. She kicked the body to the side before it could fall on her again and sat up. “Thanks, Gluten!”  
She ducked back down as another fireball flew directly at her and Gluten stalked towards her, fuming. “I’m covered in bug guts now, thanks to you.”  
“Aren’t we all, though?” Kai pointed out dryly. She felt a shooting pain in her arm and looked down, wincing. “Ow.”  
Ariella followed her gaze down and gasped. “Oh my Crystals, why is it turning green?”  
Gluten and Ash immediately ran over to look, and Gluten turned to dry-heave. “Oh, that’s nasty.”  
Ash gingerly took Kai’s wrist and lifted it to get a better look at the large puncture mark lined with rapidly spreading green veins that the stinger had left. Kai bit back the urge to scream. “Ow, stop moving it so much!”  
“Must be poison,” Gluten gagged.  
“Venom, actually,” Ash corrected. “Poison you ingest, venom you get from being bitten.”  
“Same difference,” Gluten snapped. “Either way she’s going to slowly die.”  
“So very helpful, Gluten,” Kai groaned.  
“It’s fine,” Ariella said, more to reassure herself than anything else. “You’ll be fine, Kai. There might be an antidote or two in one of the bags. I’ll just get that for you and we shall be good to go.”  
She stuck her arm armpit-deep into the communal bag and dug around for a minute as the other three watched expectantly. Her brow suddenly furrowed and she turned the bag upside down to shake out five or six potions and a couple of phoenix down. She clucked her tongue and reached into Kai’s bag and reached around, muttering to herself in confusion. She turned the bag upside down to reveal a clinking heap of ethers, potions, and seven or eight phoenix down, but no antidotes. She glared at Kai. “You raided the Elfheim item shop and you didn’t think to steal some antidotes?”  
Kai shrugged. “I thought you’d have bought Poisona. Didn’t think we needed any.”  
Everyone looked suddenly uncomfortable. Kai’s face fell. “You didn’t buy Poisona?”  
Ariella pointed at Gluten accusingly. “This idiot spent all the money buying Thundara. Because one multiple-attack spell isn’t enough.”  
Gluten scoffed. “You realize there are different element spell lines for different resistances, right?”  
Ariella snapped back with something and Gluten yelled right back at her. Ash sighed and gestured to the two bickering mages. “That’s why we couldn’t buy any provisions before we headed out.”  
Kai rolled her eyes and pulled her bandana off of her face. “Help me tie this below my elbow. We’ll just figure something out later.”  
Ash nodded and did as she was told. Once the bandana was knotted securely around Kai’s arm, she stood up and stretched. “Okay, did we check all the rooms?”  
Ariella used a still-ranting Gluten’s face as a support to stand up and tried to push Kai back down. “Hey, no. If you move the poison will act faster.”  
Ash let out a small cough. “Venom.”  
Kai shook her head. “It’ll be fine. Worst case scenario, I die and you need to use a phoenix down. Did we check all the rooms yet?”  
Gluten shook her head. “There was the one in the third row from the stairs. None of us got to it yet.”  
Ash nodded and shouldered her sword. “Okay. Let’s go check it together.”  
They shouldered their bags and weapons and headed towards the corner of the floor. Ash motioned for everyone to line up against the wall as they approached the door and slowly reached for the knob. She lightly opened it and stuck her head in to check for enemies. Everyone looked at her expectantly and Kai tried to peek over her head. “Anything?”  
“Just a chest,” Ash replied. “The rooms in the next row are locked. This has to be it.”  
She opened the door fully and stepped inside, and the other three followed. The room was completely empty save for the dusty red chest surrounded by gargoyles in the center. Everyone shivered as they stepped inside. Ash stared at the chest and huffed. “This can’t be that easy, can it? This room has got to be rigged somewhere.”  
She reached out carefully to wave her hand in front of one of the gargoyles and sighed, almost in disappointment, when nothing happened. “What’s the point of having gargoyles if they don’t shoot fire at intruders?”  
“Decor,” Gluten offered. “Or to scare you into thinking that they might spit fire.”  
Ash frowned. “So I guess there were no traps then. Awesome, we could just walk up, open the chest, and--”  
“No, wait a minute,” Kai cut her off and held out her good arm to keep Ash back. “Look at the floor. Ariella, torch, please?”  
Ariella nodded and handed her her torch. Kai shone it on the floor to show a faint outline in the dirt. “Trap tile. It hasn’t been used in a while, so I’m not sure if it still works, but let’s not take our chances.”  
“But we need to step on it in order to open the chest,” Ariella pointed out. “It’s too big to just reach over or around.”  
“We could reach over with a sword,” Gluten suggested. “With the extra reach from the blade we could definitely reach it.”  
Kai shook her head. “There’s no leverage there and the lid’s too heavy to lift from that far away.”  
Ariella took the torch back and leaned over to check behind the gargoyles. “Someone could climb over the back, couldn’t they? I don’t see any other tiles back here.”  
“We’d still have to open it from the front,” Gluten pointed out. “Unless you want to fall in and get trapped forever, or fall onto the tile and trigger whatever trap it is anyway.”  
Ariella sighed and scratched her ear in frustration.  
Ash examined the tile and shuffled her feet along the border. Kai frowned. “What’re you thinking, Ash?”  
Ash ignored her and dropped down into a center split. Kai, Ariella, and Gluten all yelled in terror as she started moving forward over the tile, her feet shuffling along each side of it. “Ash! What’re you doing?!”  
Ash looked up as she reached for the chest and shrugged. “Seemed easiest. Ari, hold the torch for me please?”  
Ariella hesitantly brought the torch next to Ash, who rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “Alright, here we go.”  
She hooked her fingers under the rim of the chest lid and tried to lift. The lid barely moved and she frowned. “Are lids supposed to be this heavy?”  
Kai leaned over and frowned. “This is a wooden chest, right?”  
“It feels like one,” Ash muttered. “Might be a heavier type of wood, or it might be reinforced on the inside, the same way the ship is. I can’t tell with the paint on it.”  
She grunted and strained at the lid again. This time it lifted a little bit, and everyone cheered. Ash chuckled and readjusted her hands to lift again. Suddenly she gasped and slipped, and everyone screamed. She barely stopped herself from falling and laughed sheepishly. “Whoops.”  
She shuffled her feet a little bit. Kai reached out nervously, wincing as pain shot through her bad arm. “You good there?”  
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ash assured her, still shuffling. “I just need to fix my footing a little--”  
There was a soft click below them and Ash winced. “Oh, for the love of--”  
The walls suddenly rumbled and large hollows opened up on either side of the chest as the sludge and dirt fell away to reveal two tall, tentacled creatures in highly embellished robes. Their eyes flashed bright red as they woke, and they roared in unison, loud enough to shake chunks of dust from the ceiling. Everyone screamed as one after the other they stepped out of the wall, brandishing large metal staves. Ariella gasped. “Piscodemons!”  
Gluten hurriedly leafed through her spellbook. “Where did I put that spell again?”  
“Not now, Gluten!” Kai snapped and drew her scimitar, fighting back tears as her arm throbbed. “Help us fight this thing!”  
“I will once I find this spell,” Gluten snapped back.  
Ariella unclipped her hammer from her belt. “Where’s your weapon?”  
“Haven’t had one,” Gluten replied. “I stuck my staff in Garland’s eye and it wouldn’t dislodge, so I just kind of left it there.”  
Kai looked back at Gluten incredulously. “How do you go traveling for weeks without a weapon and not think to buy a new one?” she groaned. “Not so much as a ‘hey, I don’t have a weapon, can we go buy one?’”  
One of the piscodemons brought the staff down over Kai’s head, and Ash leapt up to tackle the monster before the blow could connect. “Yell at each other later! Help me take these things down!”  
Ariella swung at the other piscodemon as it came from the other direction to stab at Gluten. The hammer sunk into its face without doing much damage, but the force of the swing was enough to throw it off-track. Kai felt around her bag for the dagger and tossed it to Gluten. “Use this for now!”  
Gluten fumbled with the dagger for a moment, but managed to recover in time to stab the piscodemon before it could attack her and Ariella again.  
Kai turned and cut over the top of Ash’s head, slicing into the other piscodemon’s chest. The piscodemon roared in pain and made a jab at her face with its staff, and Ash reared up to parry the blow. The tip of the staff hit her square in the shoulder as she overshot the parry, sending her reeling back into Kai. Kai blocked an incoming swing and kicked the piscodemon square in the chest. It fell backwards enough that she could switch places with Ash. “Are you okay?”  
Ash grunted and struggled to stand up, an alarming amount of blood gushing out of her shoulder. She’d barely made it to her knees when her entire body seemed to give out and she toppled over. She grinned, color quickly draining from her face. “I’d give you a thumb’s up, but I don’t think I can move right now. Watch out for the staves, they suck the ability to move right out of you.”  
She grunted as Kai kicked her out of the way of another stab from the piscodemon. Kai tried to parry as it lifted the staff to swing at her, but a sudden shock of pain from her bad arm had her gasping and dropping her scimitar. The staff hit her square across the middle and she flew backwards, gasping as the air was knocked clean from her lungs. She gasped for breath and forced herself to flop over as much as she could towards Ariella, who was barely fending off the other piscodemon as Gluten continued to practically tear through pages of her spellbook and mutter to herself. The piscodemon that Kai and Ash had been fighting had recovered and came rushing at Ariella and Gluten, staff raised and tentacles thrashing. Kai struggled to her feet and fumbled for her scimitar handle, but it was too late. The piscodemon’s staff had already started coming down towards Gluten’s head. Kai screamed. “Look out behind you!”  
Gluten pointed behind her without looking. “Thunder!”  
A bolt of lightning shot from her fingertip and hit the piscodemon square in the face. It let out an otherworldly shriek and fell to the ground, seizing. Ash dragged herself over and drove her sword into its belly, prompting another shriek before it finally flopped still. Gluten checked behind herself and nodded in approval. “Awesome.”  
Ariella grunted as the remaining piscodemon pulled its staff free and knocked her backwards. Kai managed to catch her before she fell over and blocked an overhead swing. Gluten suddenly looked up with a pleased expression. “Found the spell!”  
“Then use it!” Ariella snapped as she knocked the staff free of where it had locked with the hilt of Kai’s scimitar and clean out of the piscodemon’s hand. Kai gasped in pain and disgust as a geyser of fluid erupted from the puncture on her arm from being yanked along, but managed to point towards Ash still bleeding out on the ground. Ariella nodded and retreated towards her.  
Gluten nodded and rubbed her hands together. “Just gotta charge up first…”  
Tiny sparks popped out of her palms. Kai fought the urge to scream as she swung her scimitar into the piscodemon’s middle. “Gluten, now would be a good time!”  
Gluten threw her hands forward, palms facing the piscodemon. “Thundara!”  
There was a loud crack, then bolts of lighting shot from her palms towards the piscodemon. It was screaming even before it was hit and stayed suspended in the air for almost a minute, still shrieking as visible currents of blue electricity passed through Gluten’s hands to its body. Finally, Gluten canceled the spell with a flourish of her wrists, and the completely fried piscodemon landed with a thud. Gluten mopped at her face with her sleeve and let out a huge breath. “Is he dead?”  
“Oi!” Ash yelled around a mouthful of potion from her spot on the floor. She pointed frantically to the chest. “One of you step on the tile!”  
Gluten looked over, confused. “Why?”  
Kai pushed past her and ran for the tile, which had begun to rise slowly back into position. “Because it can’t re-trigger if it can’t reset. Do you want to fight more piscodemons like this? I bet you all the gil I will ever pilfer from this point on that there’s a whole nest of them in the walls.”  
“Hurry!” Ariella called out.  
Kai stumbled onto the tile before it could reset, and everyone sighed in relief. Ash slowly stood up with Ariella’s help and approached the chest. “You think we can open it now?”  
Kai gripped one of the gargoyles tightly to keep from collapsing and grunted breathily. Even with the bandana on her arm, she could feel the venom starting to work its way through the rest of her body. “Probably. You two do it.”  
Ash and Ariella nodded and each stepped onto the tile. Gluten appeared behind Kai to catch her as she fell. Her vision started blurring just as Ariella and Ash managed to lift the lid of the chest and immediately erupted in fuzzy cheers. Kai blinked and tried to sit up. “So is it…?”  
“Yes!” Ash garbled out, lifting something shiny out of the chest. “We found the crown!”  
“Finally!” Ariella sobbed, equally garbled.  
“Awesome,” Kai sighed. “I’m going to take a nap real quick. Wake me up when you’re ready to leave.”  
“No, Kai!” Gluten shook her frantically. “Kai! Stay awake! If you go to sleep now you’re going to die!”  
Kai waved her hand dismissively, noting that it felt extremely heavy and painful. “That’s fine. We have a lot of phoenix down.”


	7. Die, Erlkonig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, the title is a Schubert reference.)
> 
> The party finally meet Astos. Gluten’s and Kai’s health issues keep getting in the way. The quest to cure the comatose elf prince involved curing a blind witch. The ship is probably cursed to jinx everything these girls say.

Gluten was jostled awake by her head suddenly bumping over a particularly large tree root. She squeaked and reached up to grab her hat from where it had fallen off and strained to look up groggily at Ariella, who was dragging her by her ankles through the forest. “Are we there yet?”  
Ariella shrugged without looking backwards and let Gluten’s legs thud to the ground as they exited the treeline. “About an hour out, if I remember right. You think you can walk the rest of the way?”  
Gluten grumbled and rolled to push herself up. “I’m still sleepy though.”  
“It’s not that far,” Kai called from where she was draped limply across Ash’s back. The phoenix down hadn’t worked as well as everyone had hoped, and she was still extremely weak and ill despite being alive. “We’ll be able to sleep once we get to the Keep and give the crown back to Stosa.”  
Ariella squatted behind Gluten’s head and hooked her arms under her armpits to pull her up. “Come on. I’ve been dragging you for the past five miles. Use your perfectly functional bones and walk yourself the rest of the way.”  
Gluten whined and floppily pushed herself up to start trudging along.  
The sun had already begun setting by the time the Keep came into sight. Gluten stood at the top of the hill overlooking it, clutching her knees and panting heavily. Kai tapped on Ash’s shoulder, and Ash gently put her down. “Are you okay? You still look pale.”  
“I’m not dying anymore, though,” Kai replied. “We still have the crown, right?”  
“Yup,” Ash said and pulled the jewel-encrusted crown out of the bag.  
Kai gave her a thumbs-up. “Great. Let us be off.”  
Ariella frowned. “Don’t force yourself if you don’t feel well. I know we’re literally right here, but we’re literally right here. We can take the night to rest up and get the crown to Stosa tomorrow. It’s not like we’re rushing back or anything.”  
“I second that,” Gluten wheezed. “Kai’s still dying, and I’m starting to die. Holy Crystals, I think my lungs are giving out.”  
Ariella huffed and shoved a potion and an ether at Gluten. “That’s not your lungs, it’s you screaming every time you cast Thundara and frying your airways. I told you to stop that. You, Kai. Drink one too.” She shoved a potion into Kai’s hand.  
“Kai, we’re not in a rush,” Ash sighed. “We can seriously go tomorrow.”  
Kai waved at her impatiently and downed her potion. “No, I’m fine. Let’s get going before we lose the light.”  
Ariella sighed in annoyance and Gluten nearly sobbed as Ash shrugged and helped Kai stand up. Kai steadied herself against Ash’s shoulder and cleared her throat. “Now, as I was saying. Let us be off.”  
She took a step forward, stumbled over her shoelace and rolled down the hill. “Ow, [AHEM LANGUAGE]!”  
“Kai!” Ash, Gluten, and Ariella cried and ran after her.  
Kai managed to flatten herself against the side of the hill and stop herself, only for Gluten to trip over her. The two of them tumbled down the hill, cursing all the way until they hit the stone wall of the keep with a loud double splat. Gluten coughed and Kai groaned. “You couldn’t go around me?”  
Kai managed to stand just as Ash skidded to a stop in front of them and Ariella carefully slid down the hill next to her, using a shield as a makeshift sled. Ash shook her head and sighed doubtfully. “I’m really starting to think Ariella was onto something with spending the night here.”  
“I’m fine,” Kai snapped and downed the potion that Ariella offered her. “And Gluten’s fine. Right, Gluten?”  
“I’m dying,” Gluten moaned. “Ariella, I need a phoenix down.”  
Ariella smacked her upside the head. Gluten yelped as dust was tipped off the brim of her hat and into her eyes. “Okay, okay! No phoenix down!”  
Kai offered her a hand up and brushed her off. “Well, no excuses now. We’re literally at Stosa’s front door. We should get this over with now.”  
Ash grumbled and rubbed her nose. “Fine. Let’s go.”  
The four of them cringed against the loud squeal of the door as Ash pushed it open. Gluten ducked as the bats swooped chattering from the ceiling. She whimpered. “Do we really have to do this tonight?”  
“We’re already here,” Ash said. “We might as well.”  
She and Kai pushed open the door to the throne room. Stosa stopped mid-pace in front of his throne to look up at them, first in surprise at the sudden intrusion, then in expectancy as he recognized them. “Well?”  
“We couldn’t find Astos,” Ash explained, “but we did manage to find the crown.”  
Kai unwrapped her arm and everyone cringed to see the large dent in her forearm where she’d been stung. “And a ton of giant bugs.”  
Stosa clapped his hands in glee. “Marvelous work! Please, hand over the crown, quickly!”  
“Guess we’re back to square one with Astos,” Ariella sighed. “I was really hoping we could get this all over with in one go.”  
“It usually doesn’t work that way,” Gluten muttered as she watched Ash pull the crown out of the bag and hand it to Stosa, who was practically vibrating with anticipation as he reached for the crown. “I heard from someone I used to know that most adventures are mostly fetch quests for other people. It gets old really fast.”  
A low cackling laugh reverberated through the room and Gluten turned to frown at Stosa, who had his face buried in one hand as his shoulders shook. “I’m sorry, did I say something funny?”  
Kai, Ash, and Ariella looked at each other and drew their weapons as Stosa threw back his head and his laughter swelled to a terrifying volume. “I don’t think he’s laughing at you, Gluten,” Kai said. “Get out your book and dagger.”  
Stosa’s hysterical laughter finally slowed until he was gasping slightly for breath and wiping tears from his eyes. “You fools fell right into my trap!” he snickered, his voice suddenly sickening.  
Ash frowned and tightened her grip on her sword. “Stosa? Your Majesty? This isn’t funny. We still need your help finding Astos.”  
“You seek Astos?” Stosa crowed. “I AM Astos, king of the dark elves!”  
“Astos?” Ariella muttered. “Stosa… Astos… aaaaahhhh!” She smacked herself on the forehead. “Backwards! [EXCUSE THE FRENCH]! How in the name of the Crystals did we miss that?”  
“It’s fine,” Gluten tried to reassure her. “It happens to the best of us.”  
Ariella pulled out her spellbook and smacked her face into it repeatedly. “It… was so… simple… Crystals… I’m… so… stupid… to not--”  
“Guys!” Ash snapped. “Eyes on the enemy!”  
Stosa--no, Astos--raised the crown, and a wave of malicious energy nearly knocked everyone off their feet. He cackled again, and Gluten felt every hair on her body “With the combined power of the crown I now hold and the crystal eye I already possess…”  
He placed the crown on his head and pulled a glowing, transparent sphere the size of a large grape out of his pocket. It glowed with an otherworldly light, increasing in brightness until Gluten had to shut her eyes and pull the brim of her hat over her face to block it out. The light faded suddenly and Gluten let go of her hat and blinked to clear up her fuzzied sight to see a grotesque, grey three-horned gremlin in a crown standing where the king once stood. Ariella screamed in disgust and Kai and Ash cringed. Gluten made a face. “Please blind me.”  
Astos laughed in a high-pitched, reverberating voice. “I will become the TRUE elf king!”  
Ash ran at him with her sword raised, yelling. Astos batted her out of the way far too easily and she flopped over at the foot of one of the statues. He shrieked in laughter again. “It is useless to resist me! I can take what is mine by sheer force!”  
“Don’t let him leave the room!” Ash shouted from where she was sprawled on the floor. “Even if it kills three of us, we’re taking that crown back!”  
“Roger that!” Kai said and downed a potion. “Let’s take this sucker down!”  
Astos muttered an incantation and pointed at Kai. Out of nowhere, a smoky red phantom with a scythe materialized behind her. Ariella gasped. “Kai! Duck!”  
Kai barely had time to turn around before the phantom swung downward across her back, the scythe blade passing right through her. She stood straight up as if stunned for a moment as the phantom disappeared, then went pale and toppled over. Her scimitar clattered away from her limp hand as she hit the ground. Ash groaned. “Are you kidding me?!”  
Ariella turned and rubbed her hands together. “By the power of the Crystals, let there be light! Diara!”  
The ceiling exploded into light, and everyone cringed away. Astos growled as the light hit him, but other than that didn’t seem particularly affected. Ariella rubbed her hands harder. “Maybe if I try to force it more--”  
“Don’t,” Ash called as she stood up. “Go revive Kai, Gluten and I’ll take care of him.”  
“Excuse me?” Gluten squeaked. “Just us two? Against this thing?”  
Both of them ignored her. Ariella nodded and ran for Kai. Ash raised her sword again and made another swing at Astos. “ASTOS!!!!!”  
Astos turned towards her and raised a finger to point. Gluten hurriedly rubbed her hands together vigorously to get a spark and flung the volley of fireballs at Astos. “Fira!”  
The fireballs landed before Astos could finish the incantation, each one letting out a loud pop and sizzle punctuated by a rise in volume in Astos's screams as they exploded on contact. Ash took the chance to slice across Astos's belly. Astos screamed in pain and made to kick her away, and she deflected the blow and made a run to stand in front of Ariella and Kai, who had come back to life and was vomiting violently in between chugs of the potion. She pulled Kai to her feet and pushed her and Ariella towards the statues. “Go over there and heal up. He’s got tough skin, so I’m going to need your help as soon as possible.”  
Ariella smashed a potion bottle over Ash’s head and slung Kai’s arm over her shoulder. “We’ll be quick. Gluten, can you cover us until then?”  
“Toss me an ether first,” Gluten said. She caught the bottle that Ariella threw to her and yanked the cork out, snapping her still-warm fingers on her free hand to generate fireballs as she drank. “Be free and smite the gremlin!”  
The fireballs shot towards Astos, each one honing in on him even as he dodged. Ash reached up and intercepted one, and her blade burst into flames. She cut Astos across the back and he screeched. His back sizzled and the smell of cooked dark elf wafted through the air.  
Astos screeched again and lightning shot from his horns. Gluten’s vision went white with pain and everyone screamed as they were hit and the smell of burning hair and skin filled the air. She waited for the shocks to course out of her body before shaking off the residual sparks and swallowing frantically to unfry her throat. Somewhere near the throne, Kai’s body had fallen to the ground again, still pulsing with blue sparks. Ariella threw her hands up in frustration and started digging through the bag. “Seriously?!”  
“Forget it, just leave her there!” Ash snapped as she swung at Astos again. “We’ll revive her again later!”  
Ariella stared at the bottles in her hand, then shrugged, emptied the phoenix down into Kai’s mouth and shoved the potion bottle in after it. “Eh, whatever.”  
She unclipped her hammer and hurled it with frightening accuracy at the back Astos's head. He stumbled as it made contact and missed his swing at Ash’s middle, landing only a few long but shallow gashes down her arm. He turned in fury and screeched at Ariella, who groped for Kai’s scimitar to hold in front of herself. “Guys? Help!”  
Astos pointed and muttered at Ariella. The red phantom appeared again and raised its scythe. Gluten snapped her fingers and hurled a fireball at it, hitting it just before it could swing down on Ariella. It exploded into a cloud of steam and Ariella jumped and looked behind her. “What was that?”  
“Fireworks,” Gluten called out and launched more fireballs at Astos before he could point at her, too. “Toss me a potion, will you?”  
Ariella nodded and tossed her the items. Gluten uncorked it and took a long swig. “Ash! Do you need a pick-me-up?”  
Ash shook her head, grabbed Astos around the neck, and stabbed him in the side. “I’m good. Finish your potion.”  
She grunted as Astos reached up and grabbed her head. She lost her grip on her sword and he flung her across the room. Gluten nearly choked on her potion. “Ash!”  
“Just keep burning him!” Ash yelled as she sailed through the air and landed with a thud on the arm of the throne. She rolled off, groaning and clutching her stomach. “Cure… would be nice… about now…”  
Ariella shoved a potion at her and picked up Kai’s scimitar as Astos struggled to his feet and pulled Ash’s sword out of his side. She brandished it and pointed it at Astos shakily. “You and me, Gluten!”  
Gluten warmed up her hands for another round as fast as she could, but it was too late. Astos raised Ash’s sword and clambered up the stairs towards Ariella, who stared with wide eyes and trembled in fear. Gluten rubbed her hands as fast as she could. “Point the sword up!”  
Ariella shook her head. “I can’t move!”  
“Point it up!” Ash yelled and reached up to grab Ariella’s hands and direct the scimitar upward. She shoved Ariella’s head out of the way and blocked Astos's swing with her free arm. The blade of the sword dented her gauntlet and she winced. At the same time, the blade of the scimitar curved through Astos’s body and out of his back easily, and Ariella let out a sob. Astos stumbled backwards, yanking the scimitar out of Ariella and Ash’s hands. He pulled it out of himself with a wet cough and glared at them, growling. Gluten cursed and threw her hands out. “Fira!”  
A fresh round of fireballs flew towards Astos, only to either fizzle out before reaching him or be knocked into sparks as he swung one of the blades to block them. Gluten frowned and snapped her fingers repeatedly. Nothing came out. “[CENSORED].”  
There was a sharp blow to her side as Astos smacked her with the flat of the sword and she flew across the room. She hit the far wall wheezing and reached out for Ash and Ariella helplessly. “No…”  
Ash shielded a trembling Ariella as Astos raised both the sword and the scimitar at the same time, ready to cut them both down. Gluten could feel herself tearing up. This was really the end. They were all going to die. Even if she could recover before Astos came for her, there was no way she could hold him off and bring the other three back to life at the same time. The best she could think to do for her new friends was to treasure the memories they’d made in their short time together and hope to remember them in her next life.  
Astos began the down-swing, and Gluten shut her eyes to shield herself from the sight of her friends being slaughtered.  
Suddenly there was the sound of metal on metal, and Astos let out a confused grunt. Gluten could hear Ash and Ariella cheering. Curious, she opened one eye.  
Kai stood in front of Ash and Ariella holding her knife, still pale and with an empty potion bottle still stuck firmly in her mouth, but very much alive. Astos was struggling to tug both the scimitar blade and the sword free of a statue. Kai must’ve parried hard enough to send his blow flying in the opposite direction.  
Kai spat out the bottle and smacked it threateningly against her thigh as she glared at Astos. “You and me, ye [AHEM LANGUAGE],” she snarled.  
“Kai!” everyone yelled happily.  
Astos dislodged the blades and shrieked at Kai, who stood completely unmoved and smacked him across the face with the potion bottle before he could swing at her. He stumbled over and let go of the blades as he fell. Kai grabbed her scimitar and swung down on Astos’s neck, cutting him off mid-shriek. She wiped the spray of fluids off of her face, cleared her throat, and plucked the crown off his head. “Whew. That was interesting.”  
“Kai!” Gluten leapt up and ran to hug Kai until she was wheezing. “I thought you died!”  
Ariella knocked Gluten over the head, but joined in to squeeze Kai even harder. “Welcome back!”  
Kai tapped on Gluten’s arm urgently. “Um, I can’t--”  
She trailed off into another wheeze as Ash crushed all three of them in a hug and lifted them off the ground. “Thank goodness you woke up when you did!”  
Kai’s tapping became more urgent. “Guys, I’m gonna--”  
Ash, Ariella, and Gluten were all too busy sobbing in relief to pay attention. Suddenly, Kai gagged and shoved them all out of the way. Gluten leapt backwards as Kai fell to her knees, loudly retching neon green potion up and all over the floor. Ariella wrinkled her nose and made a few dry heaves of her own. “Oh dear. Not again.”  
“Why?” Gluten asked, concerned. “What’s happening?”  
“Phoenix down,” Kai gasped in between heaves. “Doesn’t seem to sit well with me.”  
Ash clamped a hand over her mouth. “That’s not a color the human body should ever produce.”  
A glimmer of light came from under the throne. Gluten pointed. “What’s that?”  
Ash knelt and reached under the throne. She pulled out the shining transparent sphere that Astos had been carrying earlier. “There’s this thing.”  
Ariella took the sphere from Ash and inspected it. “He said that was a crystal eye, didn’t he? What’s it doing here?”  
Ash shrugged. “I don’t know. What does it even do?”  
“I’ve seen one of those,” Gluten said. “The sage in Melmond used to have one. They can restore sight to the blind, and help people who still have their sight see through deceptions and curses.”  
Kai wiped her mouth and sat back. “You think it’ll help restore the prince?”  
Gluten shrugged. “Maybe?”  
“It’s worth a try,” Ariella said and stuffed the eye in her bag. “Let’s get going. The faster we get back to Elfheim, the faster we can test it.”  
“Can we please just spend the night here?” Gluten whined. “I’m completely out of mana and I’m exhausted. I don’t even care if the bats poop on me, I just want to sleep.”  
Ash yawned. “I second that. Not the bats pooping on us part, but the exhausted part.”  
Kai collapsed on the floor and groaned in exhaustion.  
Ariella sighed and rubbed her temples. “Can we sleep outside? I can’t with that five feet away...”  
She pointed at Astos’s mangled body. Ash and Gluten both nodded and beelined for the door. Even Kai immediately got up and hurried out of the throne room.

Everyone piled around the prince’s bed in anticipation as Ariella waved the eye every which way over the prince’s head. Kai sighed. “Anything?”  
Ariella squinted through the eye and shook her head. “Nope. He looks the same in or out of the eye.”  
Everyone groaned.  
“What if we fed it to him?” Gluten suggested. “Like a really big pill.”  
Everyone glared at her and she shrank back with her hands up. “Just a suggestion.”  
Kai sat up from the end of the bed and took the eye. “Maybe he’s just avoiding his princely duties by pretending to be asleep?”  
The healer shook her head and put her hands on her hips. “Unlikely. We have a rotation of palace staff that sits with the prince at all hours, just in case he wakes. I can call them all in, and all of them can testify that he hasn’t woken once in five years.”  
Ash sighed. “Well, what now?”  
“We continue looking for a cure,” the healer said. She looked defeated at the mere thought of it. “I don’t know where else to look, though. We’ve consulted even the sages of Crescent Lake, and even they had no solution.”  
“Have you asked anyone up north?” Gluten asked. “There might be someone up closer to Cornelia or Pravoka that might have a solution.”  
The healer frowned. “We haven’t been able to. Elfheim has never had ships of its own, and once the ferries from Pravoka stopped coming, there was no way to send for help from the north.”  
“We have a ship,” Ash said. “What if we go back north to ask around?”  
Kai nodded. “The king of Cornelia kind of owes us a favor anyway. We could ask him to reach out for us.”  
Gluten leaned towards Ariella. “Wasn’t rebuilding the bridge the favor?”  
Ariella shushed her and shrugged.  
The healer nodded eagerly. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”  
“Not at all!” Ash beamed. She turned to the other three, pumped and ready to go. “Let’s split up and get some shopping done, and then we’ll head out tomorrow. Sounds good?”  
Everyone nodded, and the healer waved goodbye to them as they left. As soon as they got into the hallway, Kai sighed. “So what do we do now? The north of the Aldean Sea isn’t really known for magic.”  
“There’s Cornelia, though,” Ariella pointed out. “Most kingdoms will attract some magical types. Maybe not sages, but a lot of mages that went to Crescent Lake back in the day came from up north. There’s bound to be someone still around.”  
“How long ago was this?” Ash asked.  
Ariella frowned. “Decades, maybe? It was something like sixty, seventy years ago now.”  
Kai and Gluten groaned. “Whoever _was_ left is probably dead by now.”  
A small hiss came from the corner of the hallway. Everyone turned to see an elderly elf peeking at them from around the corner, motioning quickly for them to come closer. Ariella knelt down to his level at the corner. “Yes?”  
The elf shook his head. “Not here. Come to the garden.”  
He turned and took off down the hall before anyone could reply. Ash sighed and helped Ariella to her feet. “Well, let’s follow him then.”  
“This isn’t suspicious at all,” Gluten muttered under her breath, but trudged after them anyway.  
The elf led them out of the castle into what was more like a field than a garden. It wasn’t walled in the same way Gluten imagined a castle garden would be, so the view stretched out all the way to the treeline. She sat down in the shade of the castle wall and looked up at the other three. Ash put her hands on her hips and looked at the elf. “Alright. What did you want to tell us?”  
The elf coughed. “I’ve heard rumors of a witch who can brew any potion you could imagine,” he said. “Let’s see…”  
He scrunched his face in thought and grumbled for a minute. Finally, his eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers. “Yes! I think her name was Matoya.”  
“Matoya?” Gluten repeated. “But the last mention of her was years ago. Is she even still alive?”  
“She could be,” Ariella said. “She’s a powerful witch. I wouldn’t be surprised if she found a way to extend her life. Nevermind that, though. Where is Matoya?”  
The elf coughed again. “She lives somewhere up north now, though I’m afraid I don’t know where. You might have better luck asking around the area there.”  
“It’s worth a try,” Kai sighed. “At least we have a name to go off of now.”  
Ash nodded. “Alright. Let’s go to Cornelia first, then.”  
She shook the elf’s hand firmly. “Thank you for your help, sir.”  
The elf shook his head and smiled. “Not at all. Whatever helps you help our prince.”

Gluten hung over the port side of the ship and let out another wet retch into the water below. “Someone kill me. Please.”  
“We don’t have enough phoenix down for that,” Kai called from her place at the steering wheel.  
“Besides,” Ariella added from her perch at the bow, “We need you in case a school of sahagin shows up. What’ll happen if you’re dead and Ash, Kai, and I are left to smack them all back into the ocean all by ourselves? What’ll we do without your Thundara?”  
Kai and Ash shouted their agreement.  
Gluten flopped a hand dismissively behind her. “Then you’ll smack them overboard by yourselves. I’ll be in the corner, dead to the world.”  
A series of splashes came from the starboard side, followed by several thuds. Kai shouted. “Are you kidding me?”  
Gluten hauled herself off the railing and drew her dagger. Ash swung down from the crow’s nest and Ariella came trotting from the bow, both of them with weapons drawn as they stood to block four sahagins and a couple of gazers that were shaking water all over the deck. Kai was cornered against the steering wheel by another two sahagins, her scimitar drawn and her ears practically steaming. “Why do you guys keep summoning fish aboard?”  
Ash made a swing at one of the sahagin, who screeched as it was cut clean in half. Ash grinned and looked over her shoulder to Kai. “Don’t worry! These are pretty easy to take care of.”  
As soon as she turned around, one of the gazers locked eyes with her, eyes flashing. Ash’s grin faded just as quickly as it had appeared as she suddenly slumped to the deck. Ariella glared down at her. “What’re you doing?”  
“Watch out for the walking eyes, though,” Ash slurred out. “They suck the ability to move right out of you.”  
Kai slashed through one of the sahagin cornering her and threw her hands up in frustration, completely ignoring the surviving one gnawing at her shoulder hungrily. “What do you want us to do, fight with our eyes closed then?”  
Ariella knocked one of the sahagin on the deck back into the railing and repositioned her hammer to swing again. “Just don’t make eye contact. They can’t jellify you if you don’t look at their eyes.”  
Two sahagin leapt at her and she squeaked as she was knocked clean off her feet.  
Gluten stabbed a sahagin through its fin and pinned it to the railing. “Can someone cover me so I can charge up?”  
Kai nodded and flipped the sahagin on her shoulder into the railing back-first. It screeched as its back cracked sickeningly and it fell into the water below, and Kai leapt over the deck, cutting one of the gazers straight through the eyes as she sailed past to land in front of Gluten. “Just tell me when.”  
Gluten immediately started rubbing her hands together vigorously, ducking out of the way as Kai yanked the pinned sahagin free and hurled it overboard. Kai grabbed the dagger before it could go overboard and turned to stab the remaining gazer in the eye before it could successfully sneak up on them. It looked almost surprised that it had been found out. Kai drew her knife and stabbed the other eye, then used the leverage to throw the entire monster overboard after the rest.  
The first tingly sparks ran up and down Gluten’s fingers and she whistled loudly. “Okay, everyone duck! Thundara!”  
Bolts of lightning shot from her fingers to hit the last two sahagin, which were gnawing on Ariella and a still-motionless Ash. They screeched like tea kettles as the electricity coursed through them and fell to the deck, completely charred. Kai ran to haul the bodies off and help Ariella drag Ash to the mast to sit up. Gluten scowled at her hands and shook the residual sparks out. “That wasn’t as strong as I’d have liked them, but eh.”  
“It worked, though,” Ariella pointed out, then gave an exaggerated gasp. “Oh! And guess what else? You aren’t seasick anymore, so we don’t have to waste phoenix down on you! Hurray!”  
Kai feigned surprise and lifted Ash’s limp hands to clap them for her while Ash gave a lopsided grin. “Yay!”  
They all stopped cheering as Gluten suddenly ran to the railing and flopped over just in time for an especially long and loud retch over the side, sobbing as smaller ones followed. Ash sighed. “Poor girl.”  
Kai came over to clap the rest of the retching out of her while Ariella smacked the sensation back into Ash’s arms and legs. “Don’t worry. We’re getting close to Cornelia, so we can get off and stretch soon. And hopefully you’ll stop throwing up by then.”  
Gluten looked up blearily and pointed to a shiny patch on the horizon, far off the side of the ship. “Isn’t that it?”  
Kai hummed in response and looked up. “Yes, I believe that is.”  
Suddenly her hand thumped to a stop and she took off down the deck. “Shoot! It is!”  
Gluten groaned and gripped the railing as the ship turned sharply, nearly throwing her overboard. Behind her, Ash and Ariella shouted indignantly, and Kai shouted back in apology. The ship continued to rock back and forth haphazardly, and Gluten couldn’t do much but close her eyes, hold on for dear life, and groan in agony.  
Finally, the sound of human voices besides the other three’s and wet wood creaking filled the air, and the ship came to a sudden stop. There was a smattering of heavy footsteps behind her, then Ariella saying, “if you could help me drag this one to the inn, that would be great,” followed with several grunts and more footsteps. Someone peeled Gluten off the railing, and she whimpered in protest but was too weak to do anything else.  
By the time the four of them and the kind stevedores who helped carry Ash and drag Gluten arrived at the inn, Gluten’s nausea had mostly subsided and she was able to stumble into bed by herself. Ash had also recovered and whispered over inventory in the corner with Kai while Ariella sat at the end of Gluten’s bed and filled in the map that they’d completely forgotten about. Gluten drifted off into a deep sleep as her stomach finally settled.

When she woke up, the room was empty, and early morning sunlight was filtering through the window.  
Gluten burritoed herself in her blankets and shuffled out into the lobby. The innkeeper was absently looking over her guestbook at the counter and looked up when Gluten coughed. “Oh, you’re up. Your friends went out already.”  
“What?” Gluten half-mumbled, half-whined and rubbed her eyes. “Did they say where they were going?”  
The innkeeper frowned and stuffed the guestbook into a shelf full of other books and files. “The thief and the warrior went hunting, and the white mage went shopping. She also mentioned the name Matoya?”  
“Oh,” Gluten mumbled. “Yes. We’re looking for her. Something about an elf prince needing to be woken up. Do you know where she might be?”  
“Sorry to disappoint,” the innkeeper said. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time, Matoya. Not since I was a girl. Is she even still alive?”  
“That’s the question I had,” Gluten sighed. “Don’t worry, we’ll probably figure out where she is eventually. Did my friends say when they would be back, though?”  
“Sorry again,” the innkeeper sighed. “They just said they would be back late. I wouldn’t wait for them.”  
Gluten nodded and shuffled back to the room to get dressed. Ariella had left a stack of coins on the dresser along with a notice about a new shipment of vegetables at the market. Gluten sighed and tucked the money and notice into her pocket and headed out. Maybe she could get a baked potato for breakfast.  
By the time she made it to the market, the crowd in front of it was so big and so violent that there were guards diving in and out to pull out and restrain the loudest and uruliest customers and to protect the stall owners, who hovered protectively over the crates of vegetables, even as people grabbed at them and tore chunks of vegetables out. Half of a mangled cabbage flew over Gluten’s head and she promptly turned around. The potato would have to wait.  
She wandered aimlessly through the town for a while before she came to the square where the inn was located. The only other person around was a lone girl boredly sitting by the fountain, her feet paddling half-heartedly in the water. Gluten sighed and sat across from her to stare dejectedly into the water. Somehow, the sight that greeted her made her even more depressed than not getting her potato. The stitching holding the top half of her hat to the brim was coming apart, and her face and clothing were covered in old and new stains and streaks of blood and dirt. She dipped a hand into the fountain and wiped at her face, but accomplished nothing except for smearing the stains into a bigger mess. She gave up and slumped against the stone ledge and sighed.  
There was a jingling sound and splashing from across the fountain, and Gluten looked up to see the girl swinging her legs back out onto the pavement. She tiptoed over to Gluten and sat down next to her. “Hi there!”  
Gluten looked up and waved a floppy hand. “Hi. Who are you?”  
“I’m a dancer,” the girl replied and leaned in flirtily. Gluten blinked back apathetically, but the girl didn’t seem fazed. “You wanna dance with me?” she giggled.  
“Not really,” Gluten mumbled. “Thanks for offering, though.”  
“Aww,” pouted the girl and straightened up again. “Usually that cheers people up.”  
She leaned over again. “So, what’s got you so down?”  
“Life,” Gluten sighed. “I just stumbled off a boat yesterday and am still kind of shaky. A potato would help, but I’m sure you’ve seen the market this morning. Also, my friends left town without me.”  
The girl looked at her, shocked, and Gluten shushed her before she could speak. “No, they didn’t abandon me or anything like that. I hope. They probably did, but that’s not the point. We were supposed to be looking for Matoya, but nobody’s heard of her for years. I’m pretty sure we’ll hit a dead end if we keep looking for her. Or a dead old lady witch in a basement or something.”  
The girl tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Well… There’s an old lady I know of named Matoya. Have you met her yet? Maybe she’s the one you’re looking for.”  
Gluten looked up incredulously. “You’re kidding. She’s still alive?”  
“Oh, yes,” the girl said. “She’s been having a lot of trouble ever since she lost her eyesight. She used to work in town until about a decade or two ago, after her eyes went bad. These days, they say she lives across the bridge, far, far to the north.”  
Gluten frowned. “But the innkeeper said…”  
The girl frowned back. “Oh, her? Don’t mind her. She just moved to Cornelia and married the old innkeeper last year. She hasn’t done much except take care of the house since then. Don’t rely on her too much for advice on what’s outside of town.”  
“Oh,” Gluten said. “I guess. Thanks for the talk, though.”  
The girl giggled again and stood up. “Of course!”  
“Gluten! You’re up!”  
Gluten turned around to see Ash and Ariella supporting Kai between them as they entered the square. Ash looked beat up, Ariella looked annoyed, and Kai looked very clearly dead. Gluten gaped at them. “What happened?”  
“They tried to take the ship without a healer,” Ariella grumbled. “That’s what happened. I told them to stay in sight of town, because if anything happens they can run back to safety quickly, but do they listen? No, they don’t.”  
Ash shrugged sheepishly. “We both thought we could handle it. We could’ve if we hadn’t run into gazers again.”  
Ariella tossed Kai’s limp arm over Ash’s shoulder and huffed. “I can’t even use a phoenix down on her or she’ll get sick and still be as good as dead for the next week.”  
“Oh, is she allergic?” the girl piped up. “You could take her to the church and have the priest heal her. It costs a little more than a phoenix down does, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting ill from a church revival.”  
Ash raised an eyebrow. “We didn’t think of that.” She hoisted Kai to land neatly in her arms pieta-style and jerked her head in the direction of the church. “I’ll take her there now.”  
“Please do,” Ariella sighed and pushed her in that direction, then turned to the girl. “Thank you. You have no idea how bad she is with those darn feathers.”  
“Oh, it’s nothing,” the girl giggled. “It’s an uncommon problem, but it happens.”  
She caught sight of another group of people, presumably coming from the market with saggy, torn up vegetables in their arms, and ran off to talk to them, blowing a kiss over her shoulder at Gluten and Ariella. Gluten waved after her. “Thank you! Goodbye!”  
Ariella raised her eyebrows. “What were you two talking about?”  
“Matoya,” Gluten replied. “She said there’s a lady named that who lives up north. Apparently she used to work here in town but went kind of blind.”  
Ariella’s eyes lit up. “I heard something about her too. A couple of the townsfolk recognized the name. Apparently she went blind years ago and relies a lot on a crystal eye now.”  
Gluten made a face. “Do you think she replaced one of her actual eyeballs with it?”  
Ariella dry-heaved. “Crystals, I hope not. Never let me imagine that again.”  
Ash and a refreshed-looking Kai appeared down the street and she waved them over. “Oh, that was quick!”  
“It really was,” Ash agreed. “It cost us half of the wallet though.”  
Ariella blanched. “Excuse me?”  
“Kidding,” Ash quickly amended, and Ariella sagged in relief.  
“It was kind of expensive, though,” Kai said. “I definitely feel a lot better than if we’d used the down, but hopefully this doesn’t become a routine.”  
“Isn’t there a way to revive people without a phoenix down or a church visit, though?” Gluten asked. “There’s got to be something like that in white magic.”  
“There is,” Ariella said. “It’s difficult magic, though. I couldn’t learn it at my current level, or it would go horribly wrong. Anyway.”  
She quickly smiled up at Ash and Kai. “We have a lead on Matoya. If you’re all good with it, we could leave tomorrow.”  
“Great,” Ash said, beaming. “More progress.”  
“Great,” Kai sighed happily. “More focus on the Crystals after this.”  
“Great,” Gluten wailed. “More hiking.”

“Almost there,” Kai called through the trees from somewhere over the top of the hill.  
“You said that an hour ago,” Gluten moaned as she hauled herself over a fallen tree trunk. “And the hour before that. And the one before that.”  
“You actually mean it this time, right, Kai?” Ariella grumbled from behind her.  
“We’re near the end of the continent,” Ash thought out loud as she hoisted Gluten the rest of the way over the tree and turned back to help Ariella over. “The trees are thinning out a little.We should be out of the woods and right smack on top of a cave soon. Hang in there a little longer.”  
Gluten grumbled and shuffled along, muttering in annoyance.  
They stumbled down the other side of the hill, holding onto each other and passing trees for balance. The trees suddenly thinned dramatically and the three of them blinked the sudden sunlight out of their eyes. Kai sat on a large boulder nearby, swinging her legs. She hopped off as they got closer and pointed to a cluster of mountains. “That has to be it. I told you we’re almost there.”  
Gluten and Ariella both groaned in relief. Ash popped her back and sighed. “Thank goodness. Even I was starting to get tired.”  
She gave her back one last crack and took the bag from Ariella. “Alright, let’s go!”  
“But we just stopped!” Gluten protested, but everyone else had already started walking. She grumbled and slogged after them.  
By the time they reached the mountains, what little of Gluten’s energy had returned when they exited the forest had been completely drained again. She flopped into the shade of a nearby boulder and sobbed with exhaustion. “Please, I don’t want to move anymore!”  
Ariella sat down next to her, panting, and patted her back comfortingly. “There, there.”  
Kai sighed and yanked at both of their arms. “Guys. the cave is literally right here.”  
“Can’t we have a second?” Ariella protested. “We just hiked through mountains.”  
“It’ll be cooler inside,” Ash pointed out and hoisted both of them to their feet. “You’ll feel a lot better.”  
Cool, refreshing darkness surrounded Gluten, and she sighed in relief. “This is very nice.”  
“Told you,” Ash said, then started down a long, torch-lit hallway.  
Ariella frowned. “Are we sure it’s safe to just wander in?”  
“It’s Matoya,” Kai said, shrugging and starting after Ash. “If she’s as powerful as we’ve heard, I doubt any monsters would be stupid enough to set up camp in her cave.”  
Ariella kept frowning. “I guess that’s fair.”  
A yelp and a loud clatter came from around the corner and all three of them took off towards it, weapons drawn. Ash lay face-down on the floor of the cave, groaning. Kai motioned for Ariella and Gluten to stay back and ran to help Ash up. “What happened?”  
Ash pointed down the hall. “I tripped over a broom.”  
A rustle of straw against stone came from the corner of the hallway and a yellow broom swept its way towards them. It let out an indignant whoosh and brushed at Ash’s face furiously. She spluttered and smacked at it with her hands. “Ow! Alright, I’m sorry!”  
The broom harrumphed and swept towards a section of the wall lined with skulls, then knocked against it with its handle. Everyone watched with dropped jaws as the wall rumbled open to reveal a brightly lit chamber. The broom turned as if to look at them, gave one last harrumph, and swished into the chamber.  
Kai nodded slowly. “That was totally normal.”  
“It’s Matoya,” Ariella sighed and clipped her hammer back to her belt. “Would it really be normal for such a powerful witch to have normal brooms?”  
A loud thump came from somewhere in the chamber, followed by a loud, “Ouch!”  
The four looked at each other, then cautiously stepped into the chamber.  
Animal skulls hung on the walls and sat on pedestals and in heaps next to huge pots all around the spacious chamber. Brooms shuffled busily everywhere. In the center of the room was a small, round table, where an old woman in red mage’s robes was stumbling to her feet. She grumbled. “My eye… my eye!”  
She raised her head. Gluten made a face and Ariella gasped. The woman’s eyes were closed with the eyelids sunken in, as if there was nothing in the sockets to hold them up.  
The woman froze and turned her head sharply in their direction. “Who’s there?!”  
She stumbled toward them and tripped over the table leg, crashing to the ground. “Ouch!”  
Ash ran to catch her arm and help her up. “Are you alright?”  
“Who’s there?!” the woman demanded again and tried to wiggle away. “Blast it! I can’t see a blasted thing without my crystal eye!”  
“Are you Matoya?” Ash asked and guided the woman away from the table before she could trip again.  
“Yes, that’s me,” the woman barked and grabbed at Ash’s arm before pushing it away and muttering to herself. “I took it out for one minute and it’s gone. Blast it! Who could’ve stolen it from me?”  
“”Stole what?” Kai asked. “What did you take out?”  
“My crystal eye!” Matoya snapped. “I can’t see a thing without it, and someone went and took it! Very funny, whoever thought of it.”  
Everyone looked at each other. Ariella cleared her throat. “Matoya, we’re here to ask a favor of you.”  
“A favor?” Matoya repeated. “When I’m in this state? How many of you are there?”  
“Four of us,” Ariella told her. “We wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t serious. You see, the prince of Elfheim--”  
“Of course I don’t see,” Matoya interrupted and stopped herself before she tripped over the table again. “Not without my eye.”  
Ariella grumbled in frustration.  
“Wait,” Kai said and reached into her pocket. She pulled out the eye and held it to Matoya’s fingers. “Is this it?”  
Matoya frowned. “What’s this?”  
She felt the eye hesitantly, then snatched at it. “My crystal eye! Give it here!”  
She brought it to her face and pried open one eyelid with her fingers. Ariella watched in horror as she stuffed it into her empty eye socket and Gluten nodded in disgust. “Called it.”  
Matoya blinked vigorously as the eye started shining. When she stopped, it swirled to focus on Kai. “Oh! You’re the ones who brought it back, aren’t you?”  
The eye swiveled again and Matoya looked back and forth between the four. “You four, eh?”  
“I guess?” Ash replied. Kai shrugged. Ariella shuffled closer to Ash. Gluten stared back awkwardly.  
Ariella cleared her throat. “We actually wanted to ask you something. We need--”  
“Yes, yes,” Matoya interrupted again, waving at Ariella dismissively. “Don’t worry, I have something to give you in exchange. For the sleeping prince, eh?”  
She shuffled over to a shelf full of bottles and took a small glass vial full of red liquid. “Here, take this potion.”  
She tossed it over her shoulder at them. Ash scrambled to catch it and shook it a little. “What’s in this?”  
“It’s a jolt tonic,” Matoya explained. “It’s the most amazing potion in my entire collection! It’ll wake the little sleepyhead right up. You’re welcome.”  
She gazed around her again and chuckled. “I can see! I can see again!”  
Ariella cleared her throat. “Well, then. Thank you for helping us.”  
“Yes, yes,” Matoya called to her dismissively. “You’re very welcome. Now be on your way!”  
“You heard the lady,” Kai sighed and took the potion from Ash. She stuffed it into her pocket. “Let’s head back for Elfheim. We can’t deliver this potion soon enough.”  
“I wish we could walk to Elfheim,” Gluten grumbled as they shuffled back into the hallway. “Sea travel sucks. The waves are always huge, the wind is super bipolar, and Crystals forbid it rains. Worst mode of transportation ever.”  
Ash shrugged. “I don’t think it’s that bad. We haven’t hit any storms so far, so I’d say it’s alright.”

The wind howled wildly around Gluten’s ears and rain pelted her as she clung to the mast for dear life. “Why is this happening?!”  
A loud clap of thunder accompanied a flash of lightning, and Ash’s outline appeared for a second as she balanced impossibly on the boom to lash the sails down. Another flash a few minutes later showed Kai clambering onto the foremast to do the same. She slipped and yelled into the storm in frustration. “Which one of you [AHEM LANGUAGE] jinxed us?!”  
“This can’t be right!” Ariella screamed from the steering wheel over another clap of thunder. “Everyone in port said the weather would be fine! Why are we going through a hurricane?!”  
“Everyone in port is not reliable,” Ash shouted as she hopped off the boom and stumbled to help Kai. “One of the reasons the ferries have become way less frequent was because the winds are so unpredictable!”  
“I swear on the Crystals, one of you jinxed it!” Kai snapped. “There’s no reason for the weather to just change out of nowhere!”  
The ship lurched as a particularly large wave crashed into it and everyone scrambled to grab onto something, cursing. Ash wiped the water out of her eyes and pulled herself up against the mast. “No use worrying about that now. Are we supposed to get to shore to wait it out or not?”  
“Definitely not!” Kai yelled over the thunder. “Unless you want us to crash into the cliffs or something when the waves push us, that’s a terrible idea. Ariella, can you try to get us further out?”  
“I don’t know which way is further out!” Ariella shouted back.  
Kai groaned and slithered off the foremast to stomp unsteadily across the deck. “Gluten, gimme the compass please.”  
Gluten held it out and Kai snatched it and pointed to Ash. “Go help her unless you want to be swept overboard. I’m going to get us in the right direction.”  
Gluten scrambled to her feet, only to be knocked over as the ship tilted violently. She slid the entire way down the deck until she hit the foremast stomach-first. “Again!” she wheezed. “Why?!”  
She felt a hand on the back of her robe yanking her to her feet. Then, Ash shoved a rope into her hands. “Go tie this to that big horizontal beam right there. I’m going to take down the smaller sails.”  
Gluten nodded and stumbled to do as she was told. The ship lurched again and Ariella screamed as she came shooting down the deck. Gluten stuck her foot out to stop her, and Ariella grabbed onto her ankle for dear life, her momentum nearly pulling both of them over. Ash looked behind her to see them scrambling to get up and scowled over their heads at Kai. “I thought you were going to fix the direction?”  
Kai strained at the steering wheel and scowled back. “There’s nowhere to fix it to! The wind’s coming from everywhere!”  
Gluten’s jaw dropped. “Is that even possible?!”  
“It is if the Wind Crystal isn’t working, I guess,” Ariella called out, the wind blowing directly at her and almost drowning out her words.  
Suddenly the ship seeped to drop from mid air and everyone screamed as they floated for a solid second before hitting the deck. Ash scrambled to her knees and stared at everyone, wide-eyed. “Did the ship just--?”  
There was no time for anyone to answer. There was a roar from the starboard side, and everyone looked over in unison to see a wave of ungodly proportions looming over them. The last thing Gluten remembered before the seawater hit her like a brick wall was Kai screaming at everyone to get below deck and Ariella screaming.


	8. Blowing A New One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party awake from the shipwreck and gain some insight of the situation with the Earth Crystal from their saviors. They also run a few errands before actually going to check it out.

Ariella’s whole body felt stiff and sore when she woke up, as if she’d been run over by an ogre. Her head pounded something awful, and the continuous hammering sound wasn’t doing her any favors.  
She groaned and forced her eyes open. She was in a dirt chamber, similar to the rooms in the Marsh Cave, but much cleaner, drier, and better lit with lamps tacked to the walls. It was simply furnished with only a couple of chairs, a dresser, and the bed. The bed she was on felt cramped, but otherwise comfortable. So comfortable, it took her a moment to realize that she was alone.  
“Ash?” she called out cautiously. “Kai? Gluten? Are you here?”  
There was no answer.  
Ariella carefully slid out of bed and found her hammer propped carefully against the dresser. She grabbed it and reached for the door carefully, hammer raised. Suddenly the knob twisted with a click and the door flew open to reveal a short, bearded man who let out a high-pitched scream when he saw Ariella looming in the doorway and tumbled backwards.  
Ariella reeled back, startled. “Who are you? And where am I?”  
The man hopped to his feet and brushed himself off. “I wasnae expecting ye tae be this alert yet,” he laughed good-naturedly. “Lali-ho tae ye, miss!”  
He shuffled past her and rummaged through the dresser. “This is Mount Duergar, home of the dwarves. Some of yer friends are up and at it already, if ye’d like tae join them.”  
Ariella leaned her hammer against the wall and mumbled an awkward thanks to the dwarf before leaving the room.  
The cavern outside wasn’t particularly high, but it still felt somehow spacious. Dwarves chatted back and forth as they worked, pushing carts piled high with rubble back and forth, examining lumps of what Ariella could only guess to be different ores, or hurrying across the chamber to tunnels on either side of the cavern. A few stopped to throw a friendly greeting over their shoulder at Ariella as she wandered through it all, and she waved back shyly as she went. Somewhere deeper in the tunnels, the hammering rung clear and loud into the chamber and set a background rhythm for all the activity.  
Ash appeared from one of the tunnels, pushing a rubble cart and chatting with a dwarf trotting alongside her. Her face broke into a wide grin when she saw Ariella. “Hey! You’re up.”  
“And we’re alive,” Ariella added. “How did we end up here? I thought the ship went under.”  
“We got fished out,” Ash explained. “Derrick here and some of his friends found us washed up. We lost all our provisions and the wallet and the dwarves had to use a phoenix down on Gluten, but other than that they got us out in one piece.”  
Ariella scowled. “We lost _everything_?”  
“Oh, don’t worry about the tonic, though,” Ash added quickly. “Kai has it. Apparently she has super secure pockets.”  
Ariella sighed in relief. “Thank the Crystals. That would’ve sucked if we lost it.”  
“Better that ye’re all alive,” the dwarf, Derrick, said. “Material things cannae count for everythin’. What were ye thinkin’, goin’ out in a storm like that, anyway?”  
Ash sighed. “I told you, Derrick, the wind just suddenly picked up from every conceivable direction. It was perfectly clear when we left Cornelia.”  
“Aye, that’s what they all say when they dinnae want trouble,” Derrick grunted. “Ye best keep to the land from now on, aye?”  
“Of course,” Ash assured him. “We’ll be careful from now on. Thank you for saving our skins.”  
Derrick grunted again and jabbed a thumb down the tunnel. “Yer thieving friend’s down there bletherin’ with the others. I’ll send this one o’er once we’re done.”  
Ariella nodded and ducked down the tunnel.  
Kai sat on the floor, chattering away animatedly with a couple of dwarves, one blonde, one gray, over a rock pile. “None of the gauntlets I’ve tried felt comfortable. They’re fine for Ash, but I need something a little more light for dodging, you know?”  
“Ye’ve got this armor business all wrong, I tell ye!” the gray dwarf laughed. “Ye should try armlets instead.”  
“Aye!” the blonde dwarf chimed in. “When it comes tae defense, a good armlet can be every bit as stout as body armor. Ye should try one out sometime.” “Good armlet and good leather,” the gray dwarf said. “Ye cannae get better than that if ye want light armor that still stops ye gettin’ hit.”  
Ariella tapped on Kai’s shoulder and she jumped a foot in the air before turning around and letting out a huge breath. “Crystals, Ariella, don’t scare me like that!”  
“Sorry,” Ariella said and sat down. “How long have you and Ash been up?”  
“A couple hours,” Kai replied. “Gluten’s still asleep. They had to pump something like fifty gallons of water out of her and use a phoenix down, so she’s still kind of waterlogged and groggy.”  
“A wee lass, that black mage,” said the gray dwarf. “Even slighter than Miss Kai here. Whatever have ye been feedin’ her?”  
“Potatoes, mostly,” Ariella said. “She was skinnier than that when we met her, though. I’d say the way she is now is an improvement already.”  
“She’s from the Devil’s Tail, I’m guessin’,” said the blonde dwarf. “All of the folk there are thin as sticks now. Must have tae do with the earth rot.”  
“Aye,” the gray dwarf. “The earth has started tae rot. It began in the west, and now the decay spreads. I hear even Cornelia dinnae had a good harvest this year. The folk in the Devil’s Tail have a terrible lot, aye.”  
Kai looked at Ariella. “It lines up with what we heard in Pravoka and from the king. There’s definitely a Crystal there, and my money’s on it being the Earth Crystal. I think we should look into that before we head for Crescent Lake, after we deliver the tonic to Elfheim.”  
Ariella nodded and pushed herself up. “I’m with you on that. We’ll need new provisions before we go, though. We lost the ship, and it’s a long hike down to Elfheim.”  
Kai nodded and poked through the pile of rocks in front of her, excitedly pushing everything aside as she unearthed a chunk of rock with bits of what looked like gemstones sparling through. “Oh, right, about that. The dwarves said they’re scouting the coast for our ship, and they’ll fix her up for us if they find it. The inside is reinforced pretty well and I’ve seen her go through worse storms when I was with Mikke’s crew and turn up a day later, so I’m not worried about her sinking, but we’ll still have to hike for the Devil’s Tail.”  
Ariella threw her a thumbs-up and wandered off back towards the big cavern.  
Derrick waved her over as she passed by and parked his now-empty cart against the wall. “Ye find yer thievin’ friend?”  
“Yes, thank you,” Ariella said. “She’s having the time of her life sorting gems. Do you know where Ash went?”  
“Aye, yer fightin’ friend,” Derrick grunted. “She’s back in the tunnels again, off tae help whoever needs it.”  
Suddenly the ever-steady ringing of the hammer was interrupted by the sudden clang of something being thrown. Ariella flinched. “What was--”  
“Och, that sound?” Derrick said nonchalantly. “Aye, that’s Nerrick, me brother. He’s smashin’ rocks in the back of the cave. Says he’s carvin’ a new canal tae the outside ocean or the like. He must’ve hit a bit he couldnae cut through again.”  
“Is it even possible to do that?” Ariella asked as more irregular clanging echoed through the tunnels. “Hand-carve a new canal, I mean.”  
Derrick laughed. “Tell that tae Nerrick for me, me girl! The whole damned bunch of us have tried, couldnae hammer a dent in that hard head of his!”  
Ariella let out a chuckle. “Reminds me of a few people I know.”  
“Aye,” Derrick agreed. “Ash might very well be there, chuckin’ hammers at some rock for him.”  
Derrick turned out to be right. Ariella rounded a corner near the back of the cavern and had to duck back to avoid being hit as Ash drew back her arm too quickly and nearly toppled backwards into her. She squeaked and Ash whirled around. “Oh, hey!”  
“Be careful,” Ariella hissed and brushed herself off. “What’s going on?”  
“Nerrick’s carving a new canal to the open ocean,” Ash explained, gesturing to a round dwarf in a green hat. “I’m helping.”  
“Aye, we hit a stubborn bit,” Nerrick said, scowling at the dented wall with a pile of dirt and dust at the base across from them. “I figured chuckin’ the hammer would do more good than pickin’.”  
Ash readjusted the hammer in her hand and took aim. “If I could just hit it in that one weak spot…”  
She hurled the hammer at the wall with a grunt. It spun through the air and sank into the wall in the bottom half with a thud. She and Ariella both gasped in glee. Nerrick was so beside himself with excitement that he wiggled. “Och, at long last! This is the first progress I’ve seen in weeks!”  
Ash yanked the hammer free and everyone coughed and wheezed as the wall crumbled and dust filled the air. Ariella blinked the dust out of her eyes and the tears back in and waved her hand in front of her face. “There really wasn’t a better way to do this?”  
“That’s a lot of loose dirt,” Ash noted. “Nerrick, are we sure that’s an okay thing?”  
The dust finally cleared and they all squinted at the wall. A huge slab of rock showed through a thin layer of dirt and extended in a slant into the ceiling.  
Nerrick threw down his hat in frustration and roared. “Ach! Of all the places ye dinnae have tae plant a rock, ye damned Crystals!”  
“It’s not that bad, right?” Ash said cautiously. “I mean, we could just dig around it, right?”  
“Nae!” Nerrick snapped, his face going bright red. “We cannae! Ye dig around, and the water all comes rushin’ in. I’ve got tae dig straight forward. And now, there’s a giant rock in me path!”  
He picked up his hat, slapped it clean, and shoved it back on. “And I’m so close tae openin’ up my canal, too!”  
Ash put down her hammer and stared at the wall. “Yeah, I don’t think we can hammer our way through this one. We could try getting Gluten to blast through it when she wakes up.”  
Ariella frowned. “I don’t think Gluten has that kind of firepower yet.”  
“Aye, but blastin’ the wall’s a thought,” Nerrick said thoughtfully. “If I had a wee bit of nitro powder, I could knap that rock in one pluff. Maybe even have it collapse fast tae keep the water out.”  
“Cool,” Ash said. “We’ll ask around for it. Nitro powder, right?”  
“Aye, that’s the stuff,” Nerrick replied. “ We dinnae have any here, I believe. It’s a precious substance, what with the wee amounts of it being used back in the day tae knap the old canal. I wonder where the last of the stuff could’ve gone tae.”  
“If we ask around, someone’s bound to know,” Ariella said. “Oh, speaking of which. Ash, Kai wants to know how you feel about heading west first, after we drop off the tonic in Elfheim and before heading for Crescent Lake. It’s a much longer journey, considering we don’t have the ship, but the Earth Crystal’s almost definitely there. We can’t not look into it.”  
“That’s bordering on impossible,” Ash replied. “The mountains blocking off the Devil’s Tail from us are known for killing people. The weather up there’s terrible. Even if it wasn’t, the cliffs and rocks are too dangerous for even Kai to get through, much less all four of us. Kai keeps insisting the ship will turn up, and as much as I doubt it will, I can’t think of anything better than waiting for it to show up, then heading for Elfheim. We don’t really have a choice in that regard.”  
She handed her hammer to Nerrick and spun her arm to stretch it. “I feel like I need to go talk to her about that. I’ll ask her about the nitro powder, too. Kai tends to be pretty knowledgeable about treasure or loot-related stuff.”  
Nerrick nodded and waved them away.  
They ran into Kai just at the entrance to the large chamber. She quickly shoved the pile of rough gems that she was sorting through in her palm into her pocket and fell into step next to them. “So, I assume Ariella filled you in?”  
“Hiking isn't possible,” Ash said. “Gluten’s still recovering, and the mountains are too dangerous for even you. Nerrick’s got a potential canal going and just needs some nitro powder to finish it off, so we can build a boat and go that way instead.”  
Kai nodded. “I’m telling you, there’s no need to build a boat. The ship will turn up. There’s some nitro powder in Cornelia, I believe. Last bit of the stuff there is.” She paused for a moment, then made a face. “I’m worried about how to get Gluten moving. No matter what we end up doing, we have to figure out how to keep her moving, too. We can’t just haul her up and down like cargo every time we need to travel.”  
Ash grimaced. “I’m less worried about having to carry her than having to keep her alive. The dwarves used one of their last phoenix downs on her, so I doubt they’ll want to give up another one.”  
“Speaking of Gluten,” Ariella said, “Where is she?”  
Right on cue, wet retching and what sounded like a pump being worked at full blast behind a door suddenly came from one of the rooms to their right. Ariella stared at the door in shock. “Nevermind.”  
Kai opened the door and her jaw dropped to the floor. “Crystals, Gluten, just how much water did you swallow?!”  
Ariella stuck her head through the door frame and gasped. Gluten was sitting next to the bed, her body clenched over a wooden bucket as water poured out of her mouth. The floor around her was completely crowded with full buckets of water, and Ariella swore she saw fish swimming in some of the larger ones and some seaweed in others. Ariella didn’t know if she should scream or laugh at the situation.  
Ash giggled in shock. “I mean, at least it doesn’t smell terrible in here. It’s just a bunch of seawater.”  
“Get out!” Gluten garbled around the never-ending stream coming out of her. Her eyes and nose were bright red and streaked with a combination of salt, seawater, eye fluid and snot. “This is so embarrassing.”  
The water suddenly stopped and she started choking. Ash ran in and grabbed her around the ribs to give her a couple of quick, violent squeezes. Gluten gave one last cough and another fish flew out of her mouth to land safely in a bucket in the opposite corner. Everyone gave a sigh of relief.  
Ariella looked around at the sea of buckets again. “Have you been throwing up the ocean in here this entire time?”  
“Not the entire time,” Gluten garbled, clearer this time. “There was a five-minute break where a fish was blocking my esophagus so I couldn’t get anything out until it moved. Kind of wish it stayed put.”  
“This is ridiculous,” Kai said, holding back snickers. “You’re amazing, Glutes. A grown man couldn’t drink this much water and survive.”  
“Yes, because I totally survived that one,” Gluten muttered. “Oh no, I just casually chugged sixty gallons of seawater and five sardines and died of completely unrelated causes and had to have a phoenix down shoved down my throat. Total coincidence, that.”  
Kai scowled. “Jeez, okay then.”  
"Gluten, has anyone checked on you before we came in?” Ariella asked.  
Gluten nodded. “A nice dwarf lady came by earlier to give me more buckets. She said she’d be coming by again in a bit to empty them out. Apparently I used up all the spares.”  
“They should’ve just handed you the mine carts and called it a day,” Kai snickered. Gluten glared at her and snapped a flame to her fingers.  
Ash grabbed Gluten’s hand and carefully stuck it into the nearest bucket. “We’ll need to thank her later.”  
The door opened and in shuffled a dwarf woman. She raised her eyebrows when she saw everyone crowded around Gluten. “Oh! Well here ye all are. Lali-ho tae ye all.”  
She eyes the buckets and sighed. “Aye, ye done used up all the buckets, Gluten! Exactly how much water did ye swallow?”  
Kai snickered and Gluten elbowed her hard, scowling.  
“That’s alright, love,” the dwarf woman assured Gluten. “Better that ye got all the water out of ye.”  
“Thank you so much for looking after Gluten,” Ariella said. “She didn’t cause you too much trouble, did she?”  
“Truly, thank you,” Ash chimed in. “And I’m really sorry. She’s not usually this much trouble.”  
“Well excuse me for being dead,” muttered Gluten.  
The dwarf woman waved their thanks away and laughed. “She wasnae any trouble at all,” she insisted. “I wish me boys would sleep as sound as she did.”  
“Again,” Gluten mumbled. “I was dead. It drains the life right out of you. But really, thanks for taking care of me, Darla.”  
Darla laughed again and shook her head. “I dinnae want tae see ye with all of sixty buckets of water in ye again, ye hear?”  
“Yes, ma’am,” Gluten promised. “So, what did I miss?”  
“We lost the ship,” Ash said, “and everything on it.”  
Gluten’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding!”  
“No,” Ariella said, shaking her head. “We actually lost the ship. There’s a search party out looking for it right now.”  
Gluten’s eyes welled up. “My spellbook’s gone too? And my hat?”  
“Oh, nae, we got those,” Darla assured her. “They washed up with ye, thank the Crystals. Ye lost all yer food and money, though.”  
Gluten wiped her eyes but continued to pout. “What about the tonic?”  
Darla frowned. “Tonic?”  
“She means this,” Kai explained and undid one of her pockets. The jolt tonic fell into her palm and she handed it to Darla. “We picked it up from Matoya. We’re hoping it’ll help the prince down in Elfheim.”  
“Aye, is that so?” Darla said. “I’m surprised she helped ye. She’s gotten more stubborn after she went and got blind as a bat, that one, but with a crystal eye even the blind can see. I hear that the dark elf Astos pilked the one belongin’ tae Matoya. She hasn’t been all too keen on helpin’ people since.”  
“We noticed,” Ash chuckled. “The crystal eye we took from Astos helped, though.”  
“Oh!” Darla looked them over in surprise. “Ye took care of that abomination of a gremlin too, then? Good on ye!”  
“How are we going to get it to Elfheim, though?” Gluten asked. “The ship’s probably at the bottom of the Aldean Sea by now.”  
“That’s the one place she won’t be,” Kai insisted. “I’m telling you guys, that ship is built for stormy weather. She’s everything every indestructible thing wishes it could become. We just have to find her.”  
“We can go out to help look,” Ash suggested. “That might speed up the search a little. At least we’ll find what’s left of the ship afterwards, right?”  
Ariella nodded. “We could train a bit while we’re at it, too. If we stay here the entire time, we’ll get out of practice.”  
“Do we all need to?” Gluten asked anxiously. “I don’t think I can walk without throwing up more water.”  
“Better you do that outside anyway,” Ariella said. “You can get some fresh air and water the grass while you’re at it, if you have any water left in you at this point. I’ll come, too.”  
“Bring some buckets with ye,” Darla chimed in and pushed two sloshing, heavy buckets into each of their hands. “We need these in case somethin’ comes up, and we cannae very well use them if they’re full.”  
Kai snickered again, and Ariella and Ash had to hold Gluten back from casting Fira at her.

After a few days of searching, one of the search parties found the ship waiting in a nearby dock, banged up and waterlogged but nowhere near beyond repair.  
“I told you guys it would turn up,” Kai replied with a shrug when she heard the report. “She’s Mikke’s ship, built to survive the living hell of the open ocean. A little wind and rain like what we ran into is nothing for her.”  
“That nothing killed Gluten and nearly killed the rest of us,” Ariella reminded her sourly and shoved some potions that Darla had kindly donated into her new bag. “Nothing to a crew of seasoned pirates is a whole lot of things to one ex-pirate and three boat newbies.”  
“Let her have her moment,” Ash muttered, then promptly made a face as Kai waltzed past them, still high off of being right.  
Miraculously, everything onboard was still usable, albeit completely soaked. The fact that they wouldn’t have to borrow anything from the dwarves washed over Ariella’s brain like a refreshing wave. She didn’t want to have to think about how much they would owe the dwarves afterwards.  
A few boards nailed together across the hull and patches sewn into the sails later, the ship was ready to go back out to sea.  
“Thanks for everything,” Ash called to Darla and Derrick as she hauled Gluten up the ladder to the deck. “We’ll keep an eye out for Nitro powder for Nerrick.”  
“Aye, let us know about that,” Derrick shouted back, waving. “I dinnae how much more of his bangin’ I can take.”  
“Gluten, love,” Darla called. “Make sure ye stay alive for me, aye? Dinnae give yer friends too much trouble!”  
Gluten waved from over Ash’s shoulder. “Aye aye, Darla, I won’t!”  
Kai rushed around on the deck, checking everything one last time. “Alright, nobody mention bad weather this time, please. No hurricanes, no thunderstorms, no raining sharks, no nothing. Everyone think good thoughts about the weather, and we’ll get to Elfheim just fine.”  
Ariella sighed. “It’s not us jinxing the ship. It’s the Wind and Water Crystals being out of whack. You do realize those two control most of the weather, right?”  
“Shht!” Kai held a finger to Ariella’s lips. “Nothing. You got it?”  
Ariella rolled her eyes and brushed Kai’s hand away. “Whatever. Ash and Gluten are aboard. Let’s get going.”  
Ariella took her place beside Gluten at the railing as Kai steered the ship out of the dock. “You think you’ll be throwing up this time?”  
“I’d be surprised if I did,” Gluten groaned, already nauseous. “I don’t think I have a whole lot left to throw up. I definitely feel like death already, though.”  
Other than a few sharks, which Ash smacked back into the water with a spare plank, the trip back to Elfheim was uneventful. Even the walk through the forest was strangely quiet.  
“You think Astos’s death changed anything with the monsters?” Ariella asked, unsettled with how everything was.  
“Unlikely,” Ash said. “The monster population here is mostly wolves. If anything, it’s what Kai did to those ward wolves that scared everything off.”  
“I doubt it.” Kai shook her head. “It’s probably just the time of day. All the times we were actually attacked, it was at night, wasn’t it?”  
“Except for when we first left Elfheim to fight Astos,” Gluten said. “We could barely take two steps without being ambushed. That’s why we were all dead when you found us.”  
“That’s because you went off on your own,” Kai pointed out. “I’ll bet all the gil I loot from this point onward that it was Ash doing all the fighting to protect you and Ariella and getting worn out that drew all the monsters to you.”  
A loud roar and heavy footsteps thundered from somewhere to their right, and a couple of ogres broke through the trees. Without missing a beat, Kai and Ash each slashed at one, cleaving the heads off in clean strokes and stepping aside to avoid the bodies as they crashed to the ground. Ash wiped off her sword and shrugged. “It could be our amazing improved fighting skills scaring them off.”  
Kai nodded. “Let’s chalk it up to that.”  
As they passed through the gates of Elfheim, Gluten was knocked sideways by a flying green blob. “Oof!”  
“Please!” the elf cried, shaking her violently. “You have to help us! Our prince--”  
“Is still asleep, we know,” Kai sighed and pulled him off. “We brought something back for him.”  
“Oh?” The elf’s eyes widened. “Really? What is it?”  
“Smacking him awake,” Kai said. The elf’s jaw dropped open in horror.  
Ariella clapped a hand over Kai’s mouth. “She’s kidding! It’s something from Matoya. We’re not smacking anyone awake today.”  
The elf nodded. “Good. Hopefully it works!”  
“We hope so too,” Ariella agreed and smiled as the elf trotted off to share the news. “If it doesn’t, I’m smacking him awake and into tomorrow.”

The air in the royal bedchamber buzzed with tension as everyone crowded around the healer, who rolled the vial between her fingers. Ariella cleared her throat expectantly. “Well?”  
“You said this is Matoya’s, right?” the healer asked. “This jolt tonic may be just what we need to break the curse and awaken the prince!”  
She uncorked the vial and held it to the prince’s lips. “I will try it at once!”  
Ariella could feel her pulse rushing in her ears as she and everyone else watched expectantly. “Come on, wake up, wake up…”  
The prince’s nose scrunched, and he groaned. The healer gasped and reached for his shoulder. “Your Highness?”  
The prince shifted. “Grmmmm…”  
“Your Highness!” the healer hissed excitedly. “You’re finally awake!”  
“Oh…” The prince yawned and opened his eyes groggily. He frowned. “I was having… a terrible nightmare… Am I still… dreaming?”  
“No, Your Highness,” the healer sobbed happily. “No, you’re awake now.”  
The prince mumbled again and opened his eyes more. His gaze fell on the four and he suddenly sat straight up, eyes fully open. “You… you’re the legendary warriors! Something tells me I’m not dreaming…”  
Gluten coughed. “I don’t know about legendary warriors… but did you want me to pinch you to make sure?”  
The prince slapped himself lightly a couple of times, then stared at them again, wide-eyed. “It’s true. You really are the Warriors of Light, arrived as prophesied.”  
“As prophesied?” Ash asked. “What does that mean?”  
“Were we supposed to come here?” Ariella asked.  
“We have a legend,” the healer explained, “that in Elfheim’s darkest time, the four Warriors of Light would come to save us. It’s one of the only things that kept us going when Astos and his dark elves last attacked. In return, Elfheim was to assist the Warriors of Light in their quest.”  
“Yes,” the prince agreed. “I shall follow the legend as it has been told to me and my forefathers. We elves are the keepers of the mystic key, which unlocks great treasures to speed you on your way. The time for me to pass it to its rightful owners has come at last.”  
He reached behind his neck and unfastened a thin chain that Ariella hadn’t noticed. He handed the chain, holding a shining silver key, to Ash. “This is yours, I believe. It unlocks the treasure chambers here in Elfheim and in Cornelia. I hope the treasures you find serve you well.”  
He looked around at the four and smiled. “I am awake and strong again--all because of you. Thank you, Warriors of Light!”  
The healer brushed away tears and beamed at them. “Yes. Thanks to you, the prince has finally awoken, and you’ve brought peace back to Elfheim. You have my undying gratitude.”  
“It was nothing,” Kai mumbled sheepishly. “We only did what we were supposed to.”  
Gluten nudged Ariella. “Wasn’t she the one who got in a fight with Ash over helping them in the first place?”  
“Shhhh,” Ariella whispered back. “Don’t worry about it.”

“So,” Ash sighed and clipped her new saber to her belt. “Let’s go through inventory together. Restoratives?”  
“Check,” Ariella said as she carefully stuffed the last ether into their new bag. A shiny mythril hammer hung across her back.  
“Pop-up cottages and tents?”  
“Check!” Gluten called over her shoulder, then went back to wiping down her new mythril knife.  
“Phoenix down? Wallet?”  
“Check,” Kai wheezed as she shoved the phoenix down toward Ariella with her foot. Her face had broken out in hives and she was scratching furiously. “One of the bottles broke, though, so we’re down one.”  
“Oh for goodness sake,” Ariella groaned and splashed an antidote in Kai’s face. “You better not die unless we’re close to a town.”  
“Promise,” Kai gasped and gave a thumbs up. Even her hand was covered in hives.  
“And last but not least,” Ash called over them, “who has the nitro powder?”  
“Right here!” Gluten carefully held up a small red leather bag. “Are we sure it’s not going to spontaneously combust?”  
“Only if you light it,” Ash said, then frowned and quickly snatched it from her. “Which is why I’m in charge of it now instead of you.”  
“Everyone good to go?” Kai asked, still scratching as she took her place at the steering wheel. “Is all the inventory on board?”  
“Yes, we’re good to go,” Ariella called and ran up to the bow. “Let’s get going!”  
The ship lurched out of the harbor, and everyone scrambled to grab the railing as Kai made a hard right turn. Ash grumbled and clambered up to unfurl the sails, Gluten went to huddle somewhere in the middle of the deck with a bucket, and Ariella laughed as the ship flew across the water and the wind whipped the hood of her robe off her head.  
It wasn’t long before the ship swayed sharply again, and Kai was pulling into the dock near Mount Duergar. Gluten groaned and tumbled overboard as soon as the ship came to a stop, and Ash sighed. “There’s safer ways of getting off, you know.”  
“It was unintentional!” Gluten wailed back as she splashed towards the shore. “Can you toss my spellbook down?”  
Ariella grabbed the book and shoved it into the bag next to hers before climbing down the ladder after Ash. “I’ve got it, don’t worry.”  
Kai leapt off the ladder and went to tie the ship to a nearby tree. “Okay. Let’s go. Watch your step. There were a lot of cobra nests nearby.”  
Ash pulled her foot out of a pile of grass and lifted it up. Several angry cobras hissed and thrashed on her foot. “Like this one?”  
Kai groaned and picked the snakes off one by one with her scimitar. “Yes. like that one.”  
“Isn’t it also tarantula season?” Gluten wondered out loud. “I heard they’ve been getting bigger every year.”  
“Very helpful, Gluten,” Ariella grumbled.  
Derrick was standing in front of the cave with an axe when they arrived, chopping steadily at a tree. He waved to them as they got closer. “Lali-ho, kids!”  
“Lali-ho to you, too!” Ash called back. “Is Nerrick still here?”  
“Aye, still hammerin’ away at that canal of his,” Derrick replied. “He’s drivin’ the entire bunch of us mad. Ye found anything that could help us out with that?”  
“That’s why we’re here, actually,” Ash said. “We found this in the storeroom in Cornelia.”  
She held out the red bag, and Derrick’s eyes widened. “Quick! Get that down tae him fast!”  
Ash saluted and hurried down into the cave. Ariella, Kai and Gluten started after her. Derrick reached out and grabbed Kai. “Wait a moment, Kai. Mind if I see yer blade?”  
Kai frowned and nodded. “Yeah, sure.” She unsheathed her scimitar for Derrick, then turned to Ariella and Gluten. “You two go down first. I’ll be right there.”  
Ariella nodded and pulled Gluten into the cave.  
Darla was there to greet them at the bottom. “Welcome back, loves! Yer friend just took off toward the back, if ye mean tae follow her.”  
“Thanks Darla!” Gluten and Ariella called to her and hurried down the tunnels.  
As they reached the back, Nerrick’s delighted voice echoed through the tunnels. “Nitro powder! Ye actually found some!”  
“It’s all yours,” they heard Ash say. “There should be enough to blow up the canal and still have some left over to analyze. You could probably make your own from now on.”  
“Aye,” Nerrick replied. “What a fine idea! I’ll save some tae figure out the recipe.”  
Ariella and Gluten rounded the corner in time to see Ash and Nerrick opening up the red bag gleefully. Nerrick stuck in a finger and pulled it out covered in a thin black powder. “Aye, the explosive force in this powder will have my canal open in no time flat! I owe ye kids!”  
He pulled out a square of paper and poured some of the powder onto it. Ash quickly bundled up the red bag as Nerrick tied up the powder and paper into a small package. Ash looked over her shoulder at Ariella and Gluten and grinned. “We’re getting a canal!”  
Kai appeared in a pattering of footsteps and looked around. “What’d I miss?”  
“Nothing yet,” Gluten said. “They’re blowing the continent a new one.”  
“Ooh,” Kai hooted, interested. “This’ll be fun.”  
They all followed Nerrick to the rock wall. Several new dents had been made, but otherwise the wall was as intact as Ariella remembered it. She frowned. “Is that much powder really enough to blow up the entire wall?”  
Nerrick nestled the package in one of the deeper dents. “There we go! Now we can blast this rock tae smithereens!”  
He struck a match and carefully held it to the string of the package. A soft crackling sound filled the air, and he turned and ran for the tunnels. He poked his head back out and waved frantically. “What are ye all standin’ around for? That powder’s set tae blow! Unless ye plan on goin’ with it, ye’d better get out while ye can!”  
“Right, forgot about that,” Ash said and took off after him, pushing Gluten along. Ariella and Kai ran after them. Ariella tripped, and Ash grabbed her and slung her over one shoulder. “Come on, hurry!”  
They’d barely made it around the corner when an ear-splitting crack shot after them into the tunnels, followed by a loud rumbling sound. Ariella yelped, and Gluten screamed. Several confused and angry shouts of “Curse ye, Nerrick!” fought their way through the noise. A cloud of dust billowed through the tunnels.  
Finally, the rumbling settled. Ariella uncovered her ears and peeked around the corner. “Did it work?”  
“I think so, aye,” Nerrick said gruffly and poked his head back down the tunnel. His face lit up. “Ah, finally!”  
Everyone followed him back into the chamber. The rock wall was gone, replaced by a pile of rocks that had collapsed in the explosion. A small trickle of water made its way down the wall, dislodging a few stones, but otherwise the wall held firm. Nerrick quickly stuffed a bit of clay into the hole, and the trickle stopped.  
Derrick appeared from the tunnel, panting. “Nerrick! Ye’ve gone and done it! I saw the wee bit of ground to Elfheim crumble into the sea. It’s a clean canal, that one!”  
Nerrick beamed. “Perfect! That’s what I wanted tae hear.”  
He turned to the four and nodded. “That’s yer way cleared now, wee Warriors of Light! I cannae wait tae see what lies out there beyond that canal!”  
“Awesome!” cheered Ash. “We’ll write a full report of what we see and send it back to you.”  
“It’s exciting, but the going only gets tougher from here on out,” Kai reminded everyone. “The Earth Crystal is almost definitely there. Whatever’s wrong with it, and whatever’s causing it… I don’t see this being an easy fix. We’d best be careful.”  
“We will,” Ariella assured her. “But for now, let’s just be glad that we can move forward with our journey.”  
“Aye,” Derrick shouted. “Make us proud, lassies!”  
Ash, Ariella, and Kai cheered. Gluten watched them silently and chewed her lip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I rushed the ending?


	9. Bleh, Bleh Bleh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The party arrive in Melmond and are horrified at what they see. Gluten reveals a bit about her past. The party seemingly solve the Earth Crystal problem.

“So Derrick sent me to Smyth to get my blade fixed,” Kai said, running her finger along the blade of her scimitar, newly fixed of any major nicks. “He reinforced it a little, but said I should get a new weapon soon. He told us to stop by anytime we need something that’s still reasonably in one piece fixed. Isn’t that great?”  
“No way,” Ariella called from the steering wheel. “For free?”  
Kai nodded. “Kind of. He asked us to keep an eye out for adamantite in exchange for repairs. It’s insanely light for how strong it is, so it used to be used for buildings and weapons. The only reason we suddenly switched to steel a few hundred years ago is because the supply suddenly vanished into thin air. You can’t even find mines for it anymore.”  
“That’s so weird to think about,” Ash mused. “Something that was used so often suddenly disappearing like that.”  
“I’m sure there’s more out there,” Kai said. “It was really common back in the day for airship tech. There has to be a reason for it to disappear off the face of the earth.”  
“Maybe someone ate all of it,” Ariella chuckled. “We have a folk tale in Crescent Lake about the volcano actually being the vessel for a world-eating monster. My grandmother used to scare my siblings and me into behaving with that story.”  
Ash laughed. “Maybe. I hope not. Gluten, what do you think?”  
Gluten barely looked up from where she was draped over the railing, staring worriedly at the increasingly brown line of land.  
Kai frowned. “Hey, Glutes. Are you okay?”  
“Hm?” Gluten jerked a little. “Oh, me? Yes, beautiful, thank you.”  
“You’re not feeling sick, are you?” Ariella asked. “No nausea? Lightheadedness? Anything?”  
Gluten turned to shake her head. She’d gripped the railing so hard that her knuckles had turned white. “No. I’m going to the back. Don’t mind me.”  
She stumbled towards the back of the ship. Ash frowned. “Is she okay?”  
Ariella chewed her lip and rubbed her cheek worriedly. “I don’t know. She’s been kind of quiet since we left Mount Duergar.”  
Kai shrugged. “ I wouldn’t worry too much. She’s probably just seasick again, right?”  
Ariella nodded. “Probably. I’ll go check on her in a bit.”  
Ash threw one last worried look at Gluten and turned to scan the horizon. “Oh! There’s a dock and some ruins there. How do you guys feel about stopping for a bit?”  
Kai hauled herself to her feet, groaning. “Yes please. This heat is killing me.”  
“You know what would be nice?” sighed Ariella. “If a big fish would leap up and--”  
“No,” Kai snapped. “You are not finishing that sentence. No more monsters aboard.”  
Ariella pulled the ship smoothly into the dock and Ash leapt over the side with the rope, ready to tie the ship down. As soon as her feet met the planks of the dock, there was a loud, wet sounds between a creak and a squelch, and Ash was suddenly yanking her foot out of a hole in the dock, cursing.  
Kai peeked over the side. “Everything okay down there?”  
“Watch out for the dock when you come down,” Ash called up, wincing as she plucked splinters from her ankle. “It’s kind of rotten.”  
“Rotten?”  
Kai threw the ladder down, then sprang off the railing and landed gracefully a few feet away from the dock. The unusually brown and black grass both crunched and squelched underfoot as she turned, frowning. “That doesn’t feel right at all.”  
She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. What’s with this smell?”  
Ash sniffed and recoiled a little as the smell of decay and mold became apparent. “There isn’t a cave nearby, is there?”  
“It’s earth rot.”  
Gluten climbed down the ladder carefully with Ariella close behind and wrinkled her nose. “It started around twenty years ago from further south and has been killing everything here.”  
“This must be what the dwarves were telling us about,” Kai said. “It happens sometimes, I guess, where the earth just isn’t fit for planting sometimes. But this is unnatural.”  
Ariella covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve and looked around in horror at the dead landscape with nothing else besides the crumbling ruins a short distance away from where they stood. “It’s so widespread.”  
Gluten suddenly gasped. “Oh no. No no no no, not Melmond too…”  
Ash whipped around just in time to see her sprinting towards the ruins and clambering over what looked like the mangled remains of a gate. “Hey! Wait, it could be dangerous!”  
“Seriously,” Kai muttered as they all took off after Gluten. “What is up with her?”  
The sight and stench that met them when they reached the ruins was more horrifying than anything Ash had ever seen. The smell of burning mold, wood, flesh, and metals hung overwhelmingly heavy in the air. Almost all the houses were missing entire chunks out of the walls and roofs, and what must’ve been city walls tapered into piles of stones and dust. Graveyards overflowed with headstones everywhere she looked, and ghoul-like people reduced to skin and bones stumbled in the dug-up streets and huddled against the remains of buildings, some nursing wounds in various stages of infection. In the middle of it all stood Gluten, her wide yellow hat the only spot of brightness within sight, gaping at the destruction as a skeletal man struggled to talk to her.  
Ariella pushed past Kai and Ash to carefully pick her way over the wall to Gluten. “Hey. What happened?”  
She looked up at the man. “What happened here?”  
“The vampire…” the man wheezed. “He’s…”  
Ash and Kai caught up just in time to catch the man as he stumbled. Ash helped him back up, surprised at how little strength he seemed to have. “Don’t stand up right now. Let’s find somewhere for you to sit, okay?”  
The man nodded and allowed them to lead him over to a wall, where they all sat down. Ariella pulled out her water flask and a shriveled tomato and handed them to the man. His eyes widened and he quickly inhaled the tomato. “Oh, thank you, thank you. You’re saving me.”  
“The vampire?” Gluten pressed. “He’s back? When? Where? How?”  
The man choked a little and thumped himself in the chest. “Last week. Middle of the night. We haven’t even recovered from the last time he came. Don’t expect us to make it through this one.”  
“A vampire?” Kai said. “What would he want from here?”  
“Life force,” Gluten replied grimly. “Vampires are undead, so they need a constant flow. Normally they’ll stick with blood, because that’s enough. Sometimes, though, they’ll seek out a more direct source.”  
“He’s taken a liking to the earth, in this case,” the man sighed. “The earth is decaying, and it’s all the doing of the vampire that lives in the Cavern of Earth. Our town is in such rotten shape because he’s blocking the flow of the power of the earth.”  
“Based on what we know,” Gluten said, “The Earth Crystal is probably in that cavern. The power it emits is life force in the purest form. It’s supposed to be endless and more than enough to sustain every living thing, even as it’s filtered and reshaped through plants, animals, and eventually people. Even powerful vampires are supposed to be able to draw on it from afar. This has to be one greedy bastard blood-sucker to want it directly from the Crystal.”  
“Please,” the man begged. “Will you stop him for us?”  
Ash nodded. “You don’t even need to ask. We’ll need to take some time to prepare--”  
“No,” Gluten cut in. “We’re going now.”  
Ariella frowned. “But we just got off the ship, and our supplies--”  
“We don’t have time,” Gluten snapped. “We need to stop this monster before he sucks the entire Devil’s Tail dry. The famine’s already passed the mountains into Cornelia. It’ll spread to Elfheim, Pravoka, Crescent Lake, everywhere on this continent in the next few months. The ocean won’t stop it, either. It’ll keep spreading until it reaches every corner of the world. We have to go kill the vampire now.”  
“That’s not realistic,” Kai said. “We had to fight our way from Cornelia to Crystals know wherever here is without a chance to stop and rest. Our supplies are exhausted. You and Ariella are low on mana, and Ash and I are physically drained just from working the sails. It’s suicide to go against so much as a goblin right now. And you just said yourself, the Earth Crystal is basically the mother of all life force. I’m not facing a vampire that’s been marinating in that for Crystals know how long without every preparation I can make.”  
Gluten scowled. “But--”  
“As much as I’d like to deal with the vampire as soon as possible, I have to agree with Ariella and Kai,” Ash interrupted as gently as possible. “We’re low on potions, especially. Even if we have the phoenix down, they’re useless unless Ariella can heal us or feed us a potion immediately. We might be able to hold out a bit with ethers, but we’ll run out of those eventually too. Our best bet is to stay here overnight and take the time to rest and restock.”  
Gluten grumbled and stared desperately at the crumbling buildings and skeletal people. Ariella reached up and tugged at her sleeve. “Please, Gluten. It’s just one more night. We’ll go first thing in the morning.”  
“We can handle one more day,” the man assured her. “The people of Melmond are resilient. Take the night to prepare.”  
Gluten sighed in defeat. “Fine. But I’m leaving at the crack of dawn, with or without you guys. This can’t wait any longer.”

“So what’s the plan?” Ash asked as they all sat on the floor between the beds that night. Ariella and Kai had emptied both bags onto the floor to count all of their supplies. The sight of the small piles of bottles was sobering.  
“I managed to get us some new weapons,” Kai said, and pulled out two falchion swords. “I had to trade in our old ones, but it’s definitely worth it. These are lighter than what we’re used to, so we’ll need to warm up a little on the way to the cavern.”  
“The church was completely destroyed last week,” Ariella said, “and the priest died in the vampire attack as well. The item shop apparently went out of business a while ago, so I couldn’t restock anything. We’re limited to ten potions, five ethers, two pop-up cottages, and three phoenix down. Due to Kai’s phoenix down allergy, I’m going to be focussing most of my efforts on keeping her alive, so that we don’t have her handicapped during the fight. Other than that, we should fight carefully.”  
Ash nodded. “Okay. I’ll take the lead on attack, then. Kai, you try to hit and run as much as possible. Gluten can provide us with cover fire as much as possible. Any new spells here?”  
Ariella shook her head. “We can’t afford them. We’ll have to buy them when we have enough money.”  
Ash sighed. “Okay. That’s fine. We’ll just have to be extra careful.”  
She turned to glance at Gluten, who sat hugging her knees silently. “Glutes? You alright?”  
“I’ll be fine,” Gluten muttered and stood to climb into her bed. “Let’s rest up. We’ll need to be at full strength for this.”  
She pulled the covers over her head. Ash frowned. “Are you sure?”  
“She’ll be like that,” Ariella whispered worriedly. “This is hitting her pretty hard. Melmond’s her hometown, after all. It hurts worse than anything to see the place you grew up wasting away like this town is.”

“Watch out for hyenadons,” Gluten called over her shoulder as she crunched her way through the grass. “They’ll tear you to bits if you so much as cough.”  
“Gluten,” Ariella gasped as she stumbled along. “Wait up.”  
“Shadows, too,” Gluten shouted, then hurled a volley of fireballs into a grove of blackened trees. Ash clapped her hands over her ears as high-pitched wails tore through the air. Gluten dusted off her hands and kept marching. “They’re especially mean at night. Bright light or fire usually does the trick.”  
“Gluten!” Kai yelled before tripping over a rock. “Slow down!”  
“Oh, also cobras,” Gluten shouted. “There’re whole nests of them here, and they’ve gotten bigger every year. If you see one, burn it with fire.”  
“Gluten, wait!” Ash huffed as she hauled Ariella onto her back and took off in an awkward sprint after her. “You’re leaving us behind.”  
Gluten didn’t slow down until they all stood huffing and puffing in front of a gaping cavern in the side of a mountain miles from Melmond. Kai and Ash collapsed, gasping, and Ariella quickly dug through her bag to pull out the water flask and scowled at Gluten. “What happened to being extra careful?”  
Gluten didn’t seem to notice. Ash handed the water flask to Kai and pushed herself up. “Give us a minute before rushing off again, will you?”  
Kai forced herself up and shoved the water flask in Gluten’s face. “Drink up.”  
Gluten snatched the flask and threw back her head. Kai made a face. “Not all of it, you idiot.”  
Gluten pressed the flask back into Kai’s hand and shook her head. Ash noticed for the first time that her hand was shaking violently. She frowned. “Gluten, are you sure you’re okay?”  
“I’m fine,” Gluten squeaked. “Perfect. Godly. Never better. How about you guys?”  
“Definitely not as shaky as you,” Ariella said. “Maybe you should eat something before we go in.”  
“I can’t,” Gluten said. “I handed my last potato to someone in town.”  
“Gluten!” Ariella gasped. “That was your breakfast!”  
“And now it’s probably someone’s last meal,” Gluten snapped. “I’m not the one starving. I’ll be fine.”  
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her crystal. “Something weird’s been happening with my crystal since we arrived. It’s like it knows where we are and where we need to go.”  
Ash thought she caught a faint glow coming from the Crystal. Before she could get a closer look, Gluten shoved it back into her pocket and readjusted her hat firmly. “The Earth Crystal’s somewhere inside. Let’s get going.”  
“Wait,” Ash called out. “Let me finish catching my breath.”  
Gluten had already disappeared into the cavern. Kai grumbled. “She couldn’t pick a different time to suddenly get hyped about caves?”  
A wave of cold, putrid air stronger than even the stench outside hit Ash in the face as she carefully hopped down the steep slope into the cavern. Behind her, she could hear Ariella gagging and Kai cursing at the smell. She pulled up her shirt to cover her mouth and nose and to wipe reflexive tears from her eyes. “Are you guys alright?”  
“This doesn’t smell right, even for a cave,” Kai gagged. “There’s mold, dirt, monsters, and something else. I know I’ve smelled it before, I just can’t tell where.”  
“It’s like old blood,” Ariella said. “Like an old carcass. It’s almost too strong to be that, though. Whatever it is, I don’t like it.”  
They rounded a corner. Gluten stood at the bottom of the slope, staring up at them impatiently. Ash slid down the last few rocks and reached back to help Ariella. “Where do we go now?”  
Gluten pointed down one tunnel. “There’s some treasure down that tunnel. There’s one with an earth elemental guarding it, so let’s avoid that one for now.”  
She pointed down another one. “Whatever you do, don’t go down that one. That’s hill gigas territory. Unless you like getting beaten to a pulp, no treasure down that way is worth it.”  
She pointed down the widest tunnel. “The vampire is deeper down. There’s an entrance to a lower level down that way. Watch out for undead.”  
She took a deep breath and started down the wide tunnel. Ash and Kai drew their swords and followed closely, keeping Ariella between them.  
“Hey, Gluten,” Ash said carefully. “How come you know this cavern so well?”  
Gluten suddenly stopped and pushed everyone back. “Back up for a second.”  
She rubbed her hands together and threw a huge fireball down the tunnel. Ash barely had time to see the group of wights before the entire tunnel was consumed in flames and black smoke.  
Gluten waved a shaky hand at the smoke in an attempt to look casual, then cleared her throat. “I came down here several years ago with my best friend.”  
“Just two of you?” Ariella asked.  
Gluten nodded. “Our village was starving. It was common knowledge that the Earth Crystal lay sealed somewhere in this cave, so he decided to come investigate. It was a last effort of his to save us that I got dragged into, and we messed it up.”  
She practically spat the last few words. The smoke had cleared, and she continued marching down the tunnel with everyone trailing behind. Kai coughed as she bent down to retrieve a small bag of gil from the wights’ remains and accidentally kicked up a cloud of ashes. “What happened to your friend?”  
They stopped at a dead end with a large boulder in the center. Gluten took a shaky breath and fumbled to roll up her sleeves. “Help me with this, please.”  
Ash nodded and braced herself against the boulder next to Gluten. Kai and Ariella leaned up next to them and they all grunted. The boulder didn’t budge. Ash stopped pushing to catch her breath. “Are you sure this is going to work?”  
Ariella pushed everyone aside and unclipped her hammer. “Back up a little bit.”  
She raised the hammer over her head and brought it down with inhuman force. The boulder let out an earsplitting crack and crumbled to reveal a hole in the ground. Ariella huffed, reclipped her hammer, and popped her arms. “There.”  
Gluten nodded in thanks and pulled out her knife. “Thanks. Keep your weapons out. This next level is filled with monsters.”  
“Can’t be worse than this level,” Kai said. “I can’t wrap my head around it though. Baby Gluten and one other kid making it to the second level of a monster-infested cavern?”  
Gluten laughed humorlessly.  
“Did you make it to the vampire?” Ariella asked. “What’s he going to be like?”  
“I don’t know,” Gluten said. “We didn’t make it that far.”  
“Why?” Kai asked again. “What happened?”  
Gluten suddenly stopped, then turned on her heel and pushed everyone back down the tunnel. “Go go go.”  
Ash pushed Ariella behind her to run after Gluten and slashed as a bird came at her in a flurry of talons and blue feathers. It let out a screech and tumbled out of the air as its wing flew off in the opposite direction. Gluten ran back and grabbed Ash’s collar and yanked her back down the tunnel. “Don’t fight them! They’ll turn you to stone!”  
Ash turned and ran as a whole flock of screeching blue birds came hurtling down the tunnel at her. “What are those?”  
“Cockatrices,” Gluten called as she ran. “Just keep running. They’ll stop following us eventually.”  
Suddenly Kai groaned. “Oh, [AHEM LANGUAGE].”  
Further down the tunnel, a pair of minotaurs had caught sight of them and were thundering down the tunnel, roaring. Ash looked behind her and nearly tripped. The cockatrices had gotten closer.  
Ariella stopped long enough to rub her hands together. “By the power of the Crystals, let there be light! Diara!”  
A bright flash exploded from her hands, accompanied by the deafening bellowing of the minotaurs and the confused, angry screeching of the cockatrices. Ash squatted and rubbed vigorously at her eyes as fireworks went off everywhere in her field of vision. Kai groped at her arm until she found her shoulder and pulled her up. “This way!”  
They ducked down a side tunnel and kept running blindly. Eventually, the footsteps around Ash slowed to a stop and were replaced with heavy panting. Ariella mumbled frantically between gasps. “I’m so sorry, guys. I didn’t think the flash was going to be that strong in here…”  
“No, it’s fine,” Kai huffed back. “We’ll be okay in a bit. Good job, Ari.”  
Ash blinked the remaining floating fireworks out of her eyes and looked around. The smell of the cavern had grown unbearably strong, and she wrinkled her nose. “Where are we?”  
Kai shrugged. “Dunno. Away from the cockatrices, at least.”  
“About halfway,” Gluten said. “There should be one more level below us.”  
Kai pulled out the water flask and turned it upside down over her mouth to try and shake out any residual drops. “How can you tell?”  
Gluten snapped her fingers and a small flame emerged. She pointed to the corner and the flame floated to rest on an abandoned torch on the floor. Ash, Kai, and Ariella gasped as the torch sprung to life.  
A burnt skeleton lay against the wall. Its ribs and fingers had blackened and disintegrated and one of its femurs had been snapped in half, but besides being covered in a layer of dust and mold it was surprisingly undecayed. One of its hands was curled tightly around the handle of a rusted and equally charred broadsword, as if the person had spent the last moments of their life desperately fighting.  
Ariella gulped hard. “Is that…”  
“Yeah,” Gluten said, struggling to keep her voice even. “We made it to the entrance to the next level down before being forced to run. That’s my friend. Or what’s left of him, anyway.”  
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her crystal. In the darkness, it was glowing much more clearly. “We’ll have to follow the crystal the rest of the way down. Look out for monsters.”  
She grabbed the torch and silently trudged down the tunnels. Kai put away the water flask and cleared her throat. “Break time’s over, I guess.”  
Ash and Ariella nodded, and the three of them hurried after Gluten.  
They dodged two more flocks of cockatrices, a troll, and too many undead for Ash’s liking before finding a hole in the ground. Ash took the torch from Gluten and carefully sat at the edge of the hole. “I’ll go down first.”  
“Be careful,” Ariella said worriedly. “We don’t know what’s down there.”  
Ash nodded and jumped. Instead of solid ground, her feet sank into something cold and jellylike. She looked down and grimaced at the pile of brown jelly she was standing on. “What the?”  
The jelly shook violently and let out a loud hiss as Ash scrambled to get off. All around her, similar piles of jelly wiggled to life and scooted up the walls, where they collided with countless tarantula nest sacks. A shower of tarantulas scattered over Ash’s shoulders and she screamed. “[EXCUSE ME THIS IS A PG-13 WORK]!”  
“Ash!”  
Kai jumped down and beat at Ash frantically. The tarantulas scattered, and the two of them quickly turned back-to-back and drew their swords as the brown jelly things reared up off the walls to hiss at them again. The tarantulas had recovered quickly and were now closing in on them, fangs raised.  
Suddenly a volley of fireballs poured down from the hole in the ceiling. The jelly things hissed as they burned and evaporated, and the tarantulas frantically ran in circles as they caught fire. Ash and Kai coughed as smoke filled the tunnel. “Gluten!”  
Gluten and Ariella tumbled to the ground next to them in a heap. Ash quickly hauled Ariella off of Gluten and dusted her off. “Are you two okay?”  
“Perfect,” Gluten groaned. “Just perfect. No more jumping into holes. Ochre jellies are nasty as all heck.”  
“Right,” Ash agreed. “I’m definitely not doing that again.”  
“Well,” Kai sneezed. “What do we do now?”  
“Go forward carefully,” Gluten said. “There are a ton of undead here. Mummies, wights, ghasts, those mini-grim reaper wraith things, all of them. They’ll swarm us every chance they get.”  
“Let me take care of them on this floor,” Ariella offered. “Save your mana for the vampire.”  
Gluten nodded gratefully. “Thanks.”  
Despite the care they took, they still ran into hordes of undead and several flocks of cockatrices. Ariella managed to take out enough of the undead that Kai, Ash, and Gluten weren’t completely overwhelmed, and Gluten handled a few flocks that they weren’t able to get away from. Slowly, they made progress, but Ash could tell from the mages’ pursed lips and pale faces that both of them were getting drained.  
Finally, the tunnel ended in front of a set of heavy red doors. A chill seemed to float out from beneath the door along with the overwhelming stench of the cavern, and Ash shivered and gripped her sword tighter. Next to her, Ariella rubbed goosebumps out of her arms, and even Kai looked chilled.  
Gluten was shaking harder than ever, but her face was set with stubborn determination as she put the crystal, glowing much brighter now, back into her pocket and laid her hands on the door. “Let’s get this over with.”  
She pushed, and a swarm of chittering bats poured out as the doors creaked open. Everyone ducked as they soared overhead and into the tunnels behind them. When the chittering had floated out of earshot, they all crowded into the doorway to peek into the chamber beyond.  
Aside from a couple of boulders and a single wooden chest in the corner, the chamber was completely empty. Ash looked around, confused. “Did we try the wrong room?”  
“This should be right,” Gluten muttered. “We checked all the other ones along the way. It has to be this one.”  
Kai sighed and rubbed her neck. “Welp. I guess we’re going to have to check them again.”  
She winced and tipped her head back to stretch, then suddenly yelped. “Ah, [AHEM LANGUAGE]!”  
Everyone looked up and screamed when they saw the huge blue bat staring at them from the middle of the ceiling. It blinked slowly at them and laughed, the sound echoing eerily. “Oh? And vat do ve have here?”  
“You.”  
Gluten shook harder than ever as she raised an accusatory finger at the bat. “You’re the one that destroyed Melmond.”  
The bat laughed again. “Oh, darling. Is that vat you and your friends are here for? To save that pitiful excuse of a town?”  
“People are dying because of you,” Gluten growled. “You sit here, soaking up the life force of the Crystal while the rest of the world burns and starves. I can’t stand for that.”  
“Oh, darling,” the bat cooed. “All things in this vorld are destined to end in death. Vith or vithout the Crystal’s power, the vorld shall eventually vither. The seal on the Crystal cannot be broken, and so the earth shall rot only faster.”  
The bat dropped from the ceiling and swooped towards them. Ariella squeaked and ducked. Ash and Kai flinched and reached for their swords. Gluten barely moved as the bat’s wings brushed her nose as it passed, knocking her hat off. She glared at it as it returned to the center of the room. “What do you mean, the seal on the Crystal?”  
The bat exploded into a flurry of fabric and graying skin. It settled on the floor and stood, now a tall, gray-blue man. He flung his blue cloak around his shoulders and slicked back his blond hair with one grotesquely long-nailed hand, grinning menacingly at Gluten. “Darling. The earth is dying, vether you like it or not. You cannot alter destiny. And if you vould try, then here you vill breathe your last. Mere mortals cannot kill the undying! Try, and you vill stay here for all eternity, as all who have tried before you!”  
Gluten screamed and flung her hands out. “Fira!”  
Fireballs roared from her palms to explode around the vampire. Ash bit back a curse and drew her sword before running headfirst into the resulting cloud of smoke. “Kai! Let’s go!”  
“I thought we were being careful,” Kai grumbled and leapt onto Ash’s back, using her as a springboard to land a blow from above on the vampire. A hand shot out of the smoke and grabbed her sword. Kai grunted as she was pulled into the ground. She stumbled to her feet. “Ariella, we need some light.”  
Nothing happened. Ash ducked as Gluten threw another round of fire and profanities overhead and cut deep into the vampire’s side before turning around. “Ariella, where’s the light?”  
Ariella stood pancaked against the door, eyes wide and knees shaking. “Um… um…”  
“Ari!” Kai snapped as she somersaulted over the vampire’s arm as he swiped at her. “Light, please?”  
“Oh!” Ariella nodded frantically and fumbled with her spellbook. “L-light. Okay. Um. B-by the p-p-p-power of the C-Crystals…”  
“Oh for the love of the Crystals, quit stuttering!” Kai cried out. “Why are both you and Gluten going completely off-script today?”  
The vampire sprang out of the smoke and leapt for Ariella, who dropped her spellbook and screamed. Ash bodychecked the vampire and the two rolled across the floor, clawing at each other. Ash grabbed the vampire’s jaw and slammed him off of her into the ground. “Ari, close your eyes and think of something else! Don’t look at him!”  
“Oh!” Ariella scrambled to grab her spellbook, dropping it several times before finally managing to hold onto it. “Right! Okay!”  
Fangs sank deep into Ash’s hand and she yelled and tried to jerk her arm away. “Hey!”  
The vampire’s hand came down over her face and pushed her deeper into the ground. Ash watched through his fingers in horror as the gash she’d left across his ribs slowly stitched itself back together and all the burns that Gluten had left shrank and blistered in reverse until they were smooth again. She groaned. “Why do you have to be able to heal yourself?!”  
Kai yelled in frustration. “Seriously?!”  
“[CENSORED] you [EXTRA CENSORED]!” screamed Gluten, and another round of fireballs rained down on Ash and the vampire. The vampire hissed and let go of Ash long enough for her to kick him off. Kai sailed overhead and swung her sword. The vampire rolled away and grabbed the sword, twisting it out of Kai’s grasp. Kai yelled and lunged after it.  
Suddenly, the chamber was bathed in blinding white light. Ash and Kai hissed at the sudden brightness and turned to protect their eyes. The vampire screamed in agony and dropped Kai’s sword to claw at his face as patches of skin burned and melted off of him. Ash turned and squinted to see Ariella, her eyes screwed tightly shut, with her hands thrown above her. She screwed her face harder and the light got brighter. “Is he dead yet?”  
“No!” Kai yelled back over the vampire’s screeching. She fumbled for her knife and started feeling her way across the ground towards him. “Keep the light on him!”  
A shower of fireballs erupted from the ground below the vampire, catching his cloak and hands. He screamed even louder as the flames and blinding light ate away at him little by little until finally, all that remained of him was a pile of ashes. Kai blindly threw up a thumbs-up. “Okay, he’s dead!”  
The light faded, and somewhere behind Ash, Ariella wheezed for breath in the darkness. In another corner, Gluten scoffed. “And good riddance to you.”  
She snapped her fingers, and a flame appeared. Ash rubbed her eyes and went to help Kai, who was now feeling around the floor for her sword. Her fingers brushed the pile of ashes and she flinched. “Crystals, that’s cold.”  
“That’s so weird,” Ash muttered. “Even after all that fire Gluten threw at him?”  
There was a click and a creak from the corner, and Gluten cleared her throat. “This must’ve been what he was guarding.”  
Everyone turned to see her holding up a large chunk of red crystal in her hands. She turned in around to catch the firelight on her finger and frowned. “This doesn’t look like the Earth Crystal.”  
“I don’t think it is,” Ariella said, still out of breath. “That’s just a normal chunk of gemstone, isn’t it?”  
‘Oh, no,” Kai laughed. “That’s no normal gem. That’s a star ruby. It’s more valuable than gold because of how hard it is to find and mine. You have to dig down for miles.”  
Her eyes flashed and she grinned. “Maybe if we take it back to town and sell it, we’d be set for traveling funds. We might even have some left over for after. Imagine what we could do with it!”  
Gluten scowled at her and shoved the ruby into her pocket. “Do you really think anyone in Melmond has the money to buy something like this? Where do you think money comes from in agricultural hubs, hm?”  
She frowned. “Something’s not right, though. We killed the vampire. Where’s the Earth Crystal, then?”  
She pulled out her crystal, which was still glowing as bright as a star.  
“We checked the whole floor, though,” Ariella pointed out. “If it were nearby, we would’ve found it by now.”  
“Who knows?” Kai shrugged and sheathed her weapons. “It might be hidden in the walls or something.”  
“Let’s look around,” Ash suggested. “Maybe we’ll find something.”  
Everyone immediately reached for the walls and started tapping. Ash patted her way up and down the walls all the way around the back wall, frowning. “Anything yet?”  
“Nope,” Kai said. “It’s nothing but solid dirt and rock everywhere.”  
“I don’t feel anything unusual,” Ariella sighed. “It just feels dusty.”  
“Ah!” Gluten said. “There’s another door here.”  
Kai, Ash, and Ariella practically ran to the other side of the room, where Gluten had summoned a bigger fireball to get a better look at what seemed like a large gap in the top of the wall. Behind a thick layer of dirt, Ash could see red paint like the door they had come through. “Huh.”  
“Should we dig?” Kai asked.  
Ariella reached up to brush at the gap. The dirt crumbled easily in her hand, and she nodded. “We could probably get it off if we chip at it a bit.”  
“Sounds good,” Kai said and pulled out her knife. “Gluten, help me out with this.”  
Gluten nodded and slammed the fireball into the door. The dirt wall exploded into a cloud of dust and everyone coughed violently. Kai wheezed. “Not what I meant!”  
Ash waved the dust away from her face and pushed at the door. It swung open surprisingly easily and a blast of thick, musty air blew out of the tunnel behind it, clearing the rest of the dust. She frowned. “I was not expecting that to be that easy.”  
Gluten summoned another fireball and marched straight into the tunnel. Ash sighed and ran after her. “Hey, wait!”  
The tunnel was much shorter than Ash thought it would be. She and Gluten turned a corner and came face to face with a dead end. Gluten blinked in confusion. “But…”  
Kai and Ariella hurried around the corner and came to a stop, equally confused. Ariella frowned. “Still no Crystal.”  
“There’s this though.” Kai nudged her way past Ash to kneel on the floor. She roughly brushed the ground in front of her to clear off a large stone tile set into the ground. “What is this, a tablet?”  
“What’s it say?” Ash asked.  
Ariella knelt and squinted at the squiggles engraved across the surface. “I don’t know. It’s not in any language that’s used now, I don’t think.”  
She shivered and looked up. “I don’t like the feeling it gives off, though. I’ve never felt anything this evil before.”  
“Maybe it’s a seal,” Gluten said. “The vampire said something about a seal on the Crystal. Could this be it?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense, though. Why would he seal the Crystal if he’s here to absorb the life force from it?”  
“Who knows,” Kai sighed, shrugging. “Maybe the seal is what was helping him channel the life force from it or something? We can’t read the tablet, so for all we know that could be it.”  
“If it is,” Ariella said, “Then I’m not as worried. Seals don’t hold up long if the caster is killed. With the vampire dead, it’s just a matter of time before this one dissolves. After that, the earth rot should be able to reverse slowly.”  
Gluten shook her head again. “That doesn’t seem right, though. A vampire alone shouldn’t be strong enough to seal off a Crystal…”  
“I can’t argue with that,” Ash said. “Something’s definitely not right. But I don’t think we’re able to investigate this any further right now. We’ll have to head back to Melmond for more information and to rest up again. Until that happens, we’re kind of stuck.”  
Gluten opened her mouth to argue, but Ariella cut her off. “Gluten, how much mana do you think you have left?”  
Gluten lowered her eyes. Ariella sighed. “Thought so. We still have to get back out of the cavern, too. I don’t think any of us have the energy to keep going deeper, even though we want to. Let’s go back and recuperate, okay?”  
Gluten scuffed at the ground and grumbled. “Fine.”  
They turned and headed back up the tunnel, a heavy cloud of doubt hanging over them. From Gluten's pocket, the light of her crystal slowly dimmed the closer they got to the surface.


	10. Sage Advice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gluten’s hunch turns out to be correct. The party dodge some trolls and Kai loses her chance at financial stability on the way to visit someone who could point them in the right direction.

“Something’s been bugging me,” Gluten said as they exited the cavern. “Does anyone else think the vampire was a little bit too weak?”  
Ariella shook her head vigorously. “Oh no. He was plenty difficult. I’m pretty sure I almost died a couple of times. Right, Ash?” Ash shook her head. “Not really…”  
“He was kind of easy,” Kai said. “I think we hit him a total of ten times with the swords and you threw maybe three or four rounds of fireballs at him, and then Ariella literally brought him to the brink of death with Diara. I could’ve sworn Astos was stronger than him, and I wasn’t even alive to see most of that fight.”  
“The only time I was really worried was when he started healing himself off of me,” Ash said. “And even then, he must’ve been pretty far gone already if you could beat him by turning on the light.”  
Ariella frowned. “Huh.”  
“Right?” Gluten sighed. “You’d think he’d be stronger than he was. He’d been marinating in the Crystal’s power for years. Why was he that weak?”  
“Maybe it was the seal,” Ash suggested. “I’ll bet the Earth Crystal was further down. He must’ve blocked off the flow with that stone tablet.”  
“That doesn’t make sense, though,” Gluten muttered. “He’s down there to drain the Crystal’s power for life force. Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to be closer to the crystal? Maximum life force absorbing, right?”  
Ash frowned. “Hm…”  
“It could just be too strong for him,” Ariella pointed out. “Remember, the Crystals are the source of all power in the world. The Earth Crystal alone powers every inch of land discovered and undiscovered. That, and it’s supposed to emit pure light, similar to the Dia spell line. We could probably handle getting close to the Crystal because we take in life force differently than undead and we’re immune to pure light, but maybe that’s as close as he could get without literally disintegrating.”  
“That would make sense, I guess,” Gluten said, but kept frowning.  
“It does,” Kai said, “But I’m with Gluten. Something’s still not right. If you were that vampire and you found the ultimate source of life, even if you couldn’t get too close, wouldn’t you seal yourself inside with it instead of outside? That part still doesn’t sit right…”

“This can’t be right,” Gluten muttered and scratched her forehead in confusion as she looked around at the area around Melmond. “Why’s the grass still dead?”  
“Maybe the seal’s still breaking down,” Ash suggested. “Right, Ariella?”  
Ariella frowned and sighed. “I don’t know. I wrote it off as not being an immediate process, but it’s still supposed to happen pretty quickly, now that the vampire’s dead. It took us a whole day to come back. It should be completely dissolved by now.”  
“It should’ve dissolved as soon as we killed the vampire,” Gluten grumbled to herself, still scratching her forehead. “We shouldn’t even have seen the seal. Things should’ve gone back to normal almost right away…”  
“Let’s get into town first,” Kai said. “Maybe the townspeople will know what’s going on.”  
A small cluster of people were gathered in the center of the town, shouting and pushing. Kai ducked and pushed Gluten and Ariella down as a rock sailed overhead and tsked. “What are they doing now?”  
Gluten dusted herself off and ran to push her way through to the middle of the cluster, only to be grabbed and clawed at and shoved back out. Ash ran to catch her as she stumbled over the hem of her robe. “You alright?”  
Gluten patted her sleeve at a series of new, deep scratches across her nose and huffed when the blood oozed out and flowed down her face anyway. “They’re fighting over a crow carcass.”  
“A what?” Ariella said, then whipped around when someone screamed in pain. She marched towards the crowd and elbowed her way through, people closing in behind her in a pushing, shoving mass. Kai ran after her, but the crowd had reformed so tightly that she couldn’t even get a finger in.  
A few people shouted indignantly from the center and Ariella emerged a few feet away, dragging a thin man with blood all over his face in one hand and yanking what looked like a deflated bag of feathers away from the crowd with the other. Her own robes were covered in dirt and bloody streaks and she was breathing hard enough for Kai to hear her. She turned to glare at the crowd, who were still scrambling for the carcass in her hand, ran a sleeve across a cut on her chin, and violently shook the carcass at them. “What the [EXCUSE THE FRENCH] are you doing, fighting over a rotting crow?”  
“You wouldn’t understand!” a woman hissed at her and made a swipe at the carcass. Ariella snatched her arm away and one of the wings flew off as the lone ligament holding it on snapped. The crowd shouted and fell like a landslide onto the wing before it even hit the ground.  
“Yeah!” yelled a man with the skinniest arms and legs Kai had ever seen. “You don’t live here! You don’t know what it’s like to be starving like this!”  
“I know I don’t,” sighed Ariella, then shoved the carcass into the air. Its beak, now close enough for Kai to see the deflated pink blisters on it, dropped off and bounced on the hard ground. Ariella dropped the injured man’s elbow to gesture at the carcass wildly, pointing out more blisters. “But this thing has the plague! You’re going to get sick from eating it!”  
“Like it matters,” spat the injured man. “We’re starving to death anyway. What’s a little plague infestation going to do?”  
The crowd roared in agreement.  
“A lot, actually,” Gluten called out. Her face was streaked and dripping by this point. “Happened in my village near the end. We ate some chickens that had caught the plague, since that’s all that was left. Pretty sure that wiped out half of whoever hadn’t started to death by that point. It was painful to experience, and painful to watch. Your whole body just explodes into those blisters, and they pop if you so much as breathe on them wrong. It covers your airways and everything, so you’re suffocating and being ridden with infection from all the open wounds at the same time. We couldn’t even eat the corpses afterwards because of the infection. I know starving to death is the worst, but starving to death and dying from the plague at the same time is worse than the worst.”  
The crowd suddenly went quiet. Ariella and Ash went green in the face. Somewhere near the back of the crowd, Kai heard someone retching.  
The skinny-appendaged man coughed and spat. “So what do you suggest we do?”  
“The vampire’s dead,” Ash offered. “Things should go back to normal soon. I’m not sure exactly what fruits and vegetables are available here, but I’m sure--”  
“The vampire’s dead?”  
The woman frowned. “That can’t be right. If he’s dead, then why is the earth still dying?”  
A confused murmur passed through the crowd. People muttered to their neighbors. Some glanced suspiciously at the four of them. Kai frowned. “Doesn’t the earth take time to recover?”  
“Not when we’re right next to the Crystal,” the woman said. “We were expecting the earth to spring back to life out of the blue. Granted you actually killed the vampire, that is.”  
“See?” Gluten exclaimed. “I knew it! The vampire couldn’t have put that seal on the crystal! We should’ve seen something change right away if he had!”  
“We really did kill the vampire,” Kai insisted. “Look, we even brought this back from him.” She pulled out the star ruby and held it up for everyone to see. “Maybe if we could figure out how to use this--”  
The skinny-appendaged man snatched the ruby from her and hurled it into the ground hard enough to leave a dent. “A lot of good that’ll do us! It’s just an expensive rock. No magic or anything. We can’t even eat it.”  
“Where did we go wrong?” someone else wailed. “The vampire’s dead, yet the earth is still decaying. What’s going on?”  
“This can’t be,” the injured man sighed. “We thought the vampire had to be the one blocking the flow of the Crystal’s power.”  
“We did come across a seal,” Ash said. “It was in a separate tunnel in the vampire’s chamber. We’re thinking that that’s what’s actually blocking the flow of power, but we couldn’t read the seal, much less break it. We were hoping it would disintegrate on its own.”  
The skinny-appendaged man spat. “As if you’ve ever come across a seal that didn’t break when its caster is defeated.” He sighed. “We were told that the Warriors of Light would be the ones to defeat the vampire and know how to break the seal on the Crystal. The vampire’s dead, but you couldn’t even read the seal, much less know how to break it. That can only mean that you aren’t the Warriors of Light, are you?”  
Kai blinked and frowned. “Wait, no, what?”  
“What?” Ash laughed nervously. “No, we are. We have to be.”  
“We already killed the vampire,” Ariella said. “We just need to figure out how to break the seal now. It might take some time--”  
“Anyone could beat a vampire with enough combat experience,” the woman grunted. “This one must have been no different.”  
The crowd muttered in agreement and slowly dispersed. Ash let out another nervous laugh before letting her face fall as the last person stumbled away. “But I thought the vampire was the one causing the problems? Was there something else we were supposed to do?”  
“I can’t think of anything else we could’ve done, though,” Ariella said, tossing the carcass aside. “The only thing I can think of is to figure out how to decipher the seal.”  
“Forget it,” Gluten mumbled. “They’re right. Maybe that was just a normal vampire that happened to be there. We fought it. We know how easy that was. He probably has nothing to do with the Crystal. We’re probably not the real Warriors of Light if we can’t even figure out what the real problem is.”  
“That’s not true.”  
Everyone looked up in surprise. The skeletal man whom they had helped when they first arrived was leaning against a gravestone, gazing at them steadily. Kai blinked. “We didn’t realize you were still here.”  
“Well, after that lovely tomato you gave me,” the man said, nodding to Ariella, “I still feel hungry enough to eat all of creation, but not nearly desperate enough to fight over a plague-ridden crow. You must’ve missed me in the commotion.”  
He limped around the gravestone and lowered himself down next to it, sighing. “Now, about this seal business.”  
“It’s not written in any worldly language,” Ariella explained. “I couldn’t even guess where it might be used. I don’t think I can even replicate the writing if you were to ask.”  
“Well then, I won’t,” said the man. “But an unreadable seal. Now that’s interesting.”  
“Anything you might know about it?” asked Ash.  
The man shook his head. “I couldn’t tell you anything. I can barely read and write my own name as it is. But in the cave on the northern tip of this continent lives a man named Sadda. Some call him a sorcerer, or the father of mages. Older even than Matoya. I just know that he is a wise man who knows much. If you seek help in breaking the seal, he would be the first person to seek out.”  
“That’s true,” Gluten said. “I can’t believe I forgot about him, of all people. We should’ve gone looking for him first.”  
“Well, we’re going to now,” Ash assured her, then turned to the man. “Thank you for this.”  
“Oh, not at all,” the man chuckled, reaching for the gravestone again to pull himself back up. “This is what I can do to repay you. That tomato you gave me was truly lovely.”

Kai could feel a migraine coming as she stared at the contents of the bag. They’d managed to save all three phoenix down, but on the way back out of the cavern Ash and Gluten had used up all but one of the potions, and Ariella had burned through all of the ethers in an effort to save the last potion in case of emergency.  
Ash peeked over Kai’s shoulder into the bag and sighed. “At least we still have one of the cottages. We can stop and rest if we need to.”  
“I wish the item shop were still open,” Kai grumbled. “It would take a lot of pressure off of us. If we had more restoratives on us, we could probably still sail back to Cornelia and stock up before heading to Sadda.”  
“You looted enough for Ariella and Gluten to get new spells,” Ash said, “She had her eye on Life and Curaga, so it’s not as if we’re going in completely unprepared. We have one of those, at least.”  
The door to the white magic shop flew open and Ariella ran out, waving her spellbook excitedly. “I got Life! Kai, you’re allowed to die now!”  
“Yippee,” Kai cheered unenthusiastically.  
Gluten shuffled around the corner, holding up her spellbook. “I got more fireballs.”  
“Awesome,” Ash said. “Let’s get going then.”  
They’d barely made it out of town when a couple of hyenadons leapt out at them from behind a crumbling portion of wall. Kai cursed and sidestepped one, slashing it across the stomach as it came down where she’d been standing. It howled before crashing to the ground, thrashing. Kai slashed again at its neck, and the thrashing quickly subsided into twitching as the hyenadon bled out into the grass.  
A sudden wave of extreme heat and a roar erupted behind her. Kai spun around just in time to see the second hyenadon disintegrate in the middle of an enormous whirling fireball. Across from it, Ash lay on her back staring at it in bewilderment, Ariella was peeling her jaw off the ground and shoving it back into place, and Gluten was casually readjusting her hat. She snapped her fingers, and the fireball erupted again into a huge mushroom cloud, leaving behind nothing but a small pile of ash where the weretiger once stood. She broke out into giggles and a weird dance of glee. “That was even better than I was hoping.”  
Kai and Ash glanced at each other, then scooted closer together. Ariella eyed Gluten warily and cautiously brushed through the pile of ashes for stray items. “And what spell was that?”  
“Oh,” Gluten said, still bubbly, “that was Firaga. The black magic shop owner told me it was going to be a little bigger than Fira, so I was excited. But that just now was awesome! How did humanity even come up with a spell like that?”  
“No wonder that qualifies as black magic,” Ash muttered.  
Kai shook her head. “Forget magic, that was a weapon of mass destruction.”  
Ariella cleared her throat and brushed herself off, trying to look composed despite her still-shift glances in Gluten’s direction. “Well, we should probably get going. If there’re undead in this area during the day, I’d rather not wait to see how many there are at night.”  
She turned pointedly and marched towards the mountains. A group of shadows materialized, wailing, from a bush next to her, and she shrieked. Kai sighed and jogged over, slashing through two of the shadows in one movement. Ash followed, taking out two more. They ducked over Ariella as a volley of fireballs rained down around them, taking out the remaining shadows. Kai looked up as they fizzled out and grumbled. “Did you have to launch them at us?”  
Gluten walked past, dusting herself off. “It was faster, and I have good aim. You guys were fine. You’re welcome.”  
Ash sighed. “She’s going to run out of mana before we’re halfway there.”  
The rest of their hike was punctuated way too often for Kai’s liking with monster encounters. Despite the desolate landscape, there seemed to be unlimited hiding spots for even ogres. Once, Ash tripped over a soft spot in the ground. Almost immediately, a giant toothed worm burst from the ground and descended on her. It took Kai hacking away its teeth one by one and Gluten firing another giant fireball at it to get it to let go. From that point forward, they avoided soft spots like the plague.  
By the time they arrived at the foot of the mountains west of Melmond, Kai’s arms and back were blue with new bruises, Ash had several circular bite marks and a few stray teeth embedded across her back, Ariella was pale and shaking and had a ball of holy light at the ready, and Gluten was wheezing and smoking. They collapsed in the shade of a large rock, groaning. Ash stretched out on her stomach and smacked at the ground blindly. “Where’s the bag?”  
Kai handed her the water flask and settled back against the rock. “The old guy said the northern tip of the continent, right?”  
“Something like that.” Gluten patted out a tiny flame on her hat. “There’s a bunch of mountains in between us and him right now, though. We can’t take a straight line there.”  
“Figures,” Ash mumbled into the ground, reaching around herself to try and feel for the teeth. “Can someone pull these things out of me please?”  
Ariella swatted her hand away and started yanking at the teeth, ignoring Ash’s hisses of pain. “Shouldn’t we be close, though? We’re about as north as we can get with these mountains, and it doesn’t look like there’s a cave nearby.”  
“We’re getting there,” Gluten said, “but this part of the continent is weird. Here.”  
She reached into the bag and pulled out ther map and pencil. Kai grabbed one corner and pulled it open to lay flat against the side of the rock. Gluten quickly filled in the map to show Melmond and the Devil’s Tail. “So we’ve been here so far. I think what you’re thinking this trip to Sadda is going to look like is probably something like this.”  
She lightly drew in a large point over the Devil’s Tail towards the top of the map and filled in the mountains and a tiny cave opening. “If this were true, then this trip would be the easiest ever. Unfortunately…”  
In three heavy strokes, she filled in a thin land bridge from the bottom corner of the point and a whole other nodule. “This is a stupid piece of land, and ease of travel is not on its list of priorities. Sadda’s actually going to be somewhere over here.” She pointed to the nodule, then marked on either side of the land bridge. “There’s a cave a few miles south that leads through an underground tunnel to the other land mass.”  
Ariella groaned. “So we have to hike through how many more miles of undead?”  
“Not a whole lot, I don’t think,” Ash mused, then hissed sharply as Ariella yanked an especially stuck tooth out of her. “We should be able to cover the distance in a few hours, and make it back to this side of the land bridge before dark.”  
“We should camp here for the night when we get back,” Kai suggested. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to rush back to Melmond by nightfall, and I’m not looking forward to hiking in the dark.”  
Ash nodded. “Good idea.” She stood up and cracked her back, dislodging the last few teeth. “Let’s get going then.”  
Gluten groaned. “I just sat down though.”  
The hike south was significantly easier than before. They still ran into shadows, but with the heavy coverage from the scattered rocks and mountains, they were able to dodge most of the ogres in the area. Finally, they stood at a small cave entrance.  
Ash bent down and peered in, grimacing. “It’s just a sharp drop down, then it’s too dark for me to see anything.”  
Ariella squatted down next to her and stuck her hand with the holy light ball into the entrance. “Better?”  
“Yeah.” Ash nodded and inched her head and shoulders in. Kai scrambled to grab her ankles. “What’s it look like?”  
“The floor’s not that far down,” Ash’s voice echoed back. “I think there’s another drop after getting in, but at least from here we’re not in danger of breaking anything if we just drop down. We should go feet first, though.”  
She wiggled backwards and flipped over to face away from the cave on her stomach. “I’ll go down first. Hand the bag down once I get down there, please.”  
Her feet quickly disappeared into the cave, followed by the rest of her. Kai listened for the soft thud of Ash hitting the ground, then dangled the bag inside the entrance. “I’m dropping the bag.”  
“Go ahead!”  
Kai let go of the bag, then turned to Ariella. “Okay, you next.”  
Ariella nodded and lay down to begin shimmying backwards. “Ash, I’m coming down!”  
As soon as her hands disappeared, Kai turned to help Gluten, only to see her lower half slithering into the cave. She scrambled to grab her ankle. “Gluten! What part of feet first did you not understand?!”  
There was a scuffling noise down below, then Gluten’s body was pulled smoothly into the cave. Ash’s hand appeared and gave a thumbs up. “I got her!”  
Kai grumbled and turned around. “I’m smacking you if there’s enough room when I get down there!”  
She dropped easily and turned to inspect behind her. The cave ceiling had opened up a little, offering more wiggle room where the floor dropped again. Ash had already made it to the bottom and was spotting Ariella as she carefully clambered down the drop. Gluten was sitting with her feet over the edge, gearing up to jump. Kai sighed and snatched her hat off, making her jerk back and look up indignantly. “Hey!”  
“Let me get down there and spot you first,” Kai muttered, then turned to climb down. “We don’t need you cracking your skull open and wasting our potions.”  
The tunnel at the bottom felt damp and especially chilly. Kai shivered and rubbed at her arms, wishing she had sleeves. “Brrr.”  
Gluten’s feet pushed down on her shoulders, and she reached up to grab them and help her down. They both tumbled to the ground, cursing. Gluten sat up and brushed herself off. “Thank you.”  
Ash hopped in place and took deep breaths, clouds of white condensation billowing from her nose and mouth. “This can’t be that deep down, can it?”  
“We’re probably just surrounded by water,” Ariella gritted out and pulled herself deeper into her robe. “That can affect temperature, right?”  
Kai nodded. “Probably. We should get going. It’ll be warmer if we’re moving.”  
“Oh, I should warn everyone,” Gluten piped up. “I’m pretty sure there’s an ogre tribe living somewhere here.”  
Kai groaned. “You couldn’t tell us earlier?”  
Ash shrugged as much as she could and fumbled for her sword. “Anything else we should know?”  
Gluten frowned for a second. “There’s also a stone giant up ahead. Nobody’s gotten past him. There’s also no way around him, so we’re going to have to fight him.”  
“In this state?” Kai snapped.  
Ariella grumbled. “Is it too late to climb back up?”  
Ash sighed and shuffled forward into the tunnel. “If Sadda’s on the other side, we might as well go take care of him now.”  
They all shuffled after her, Kai grumbling, Ariella muttering to herself, and Gluten’s teeth chattering.  
As they rounded the corner, the tunnels suddenly shook violently. Ash and Kai held up their swords, shivering, and Ariella and Gluten opened their spellbooks behind them. Gluten snapped her fingers and held up a small fireball to light up the tunnel ahead of them. From the shadows, a towering silhouette lumbered towards them, shaking the ground with each step. Kai tightened her grip on her sword and swallowed hard.  
A pair of glowing green eyes emerged, followed by a stoic, solid stone face. Kai heard Ash curse under her breath as they looked up at the giant now towering over them, glaring and sniffing. Gluten’s fireball crackled and whooshed as it grew bigger. The giant leaned down slowly, and Ash shuffled a little. “Whatever you do, don’t break eye contact with it.”  
The giant’s eyes settled on Kai, and it edged closer until she could feel its breath whooshing in her face as it sniffed. Even more than the cold of the cave, the feeling made the hair on her arms stand on end.  
The giant took one last long sniff and its eyes lit up. “You have star ruby?!”  
Kai screwed her face against the sudden gush of air and noise in her face. She cautiously opened her eyes. “Um… yes?”  
The giant backed away and shoved a huge stone hand in front of her. “Give me star ruby and I let you pass!”  
Kai trembled. “But I was kind of saving it…”  
“Star ruby!” the giant roared. The walls of the tunnel shook. “NOW!”  
“Just give it to it!” Ash hissed. “It’s not worth fighting him over.”  
“But this is worth a lot of money,” Kai protested.  
“A lot of money isn’t going to scrape our dead bodies off the bottom of a cave and un-pancake us,” Gluten snapped. “Just give it the damn ruby!”  
“Okay, okay!” Kai grumbled and shoved her hand into her pocket. She pulled out the ruby and dropped it into the giant’s hand, trembling. “Here!”  
The giant immediately calmed down, and its stony face broke into a smile. Kai released a breath she didn’t know she was holding as it withdrew its hand, then immediately squawked in protest as it brought it to its mouth and threw back the ruby like a piece of candy. The whole party gaped in horror and fascination as the giant chewed happily and sprayed tiny shards of ruby out of its lips, the dying crunches of the ruby and Kai’s barely suppressed wail of grief echoing through the tunnels.  
The giant swallowed and chuckled, satisfied. “Mmmm! Nothing tastier than rubies!” it declared, then turned and lumbered back down the same way it had come.  
As soon as it disappeared, Ash, Gluten, and Ariella all sighed in relief. Ash pushed her hair out of her face and shouldered her sword. “That was way too close.”  
“Thank the Crystals,” Ariella mumbled, then shouldered the bag and started shuffling forward. “I’m never not appreciating life again.”  
“Who knew that all it took was feeding him a rock?” Gluten giggled nervously and trotted after her.  
Kai fell to her knees and picked at the crumbs of the ruby scattered across the ground. “My financial security…”  
Ash clapped her over the shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll find you another one.”  
She hooked an arm under Kai’s and hoisted her up. Kai cried a little as she gazed longingly over her shoulder at the spot with the most crumbs, all too small unfortunately to pick up, but allowed herself to be dragged away.  
A wooden ladder had been mounted to the wall at the other end of the tunnel. Ash nodded in approval as she tested the ladder. “Looks sturdy enough. Good thing we’re not clambering up a bunch of sharp drops again.”  
“We’re going to have to on the way back,” Ariella pointed out. “Nobody’s had the sense to put a ladder over there, for whatever reason.”  
“It’s probably just too close quarters,” Gluten said. “It’s a lot easier to slither in and out, and it’s not like there aren’t footholds on those walls. It’s not impossible to get up and down.”  
The sun was barely starting to go down when they pulled themselves out of the cave. Ash looked around them and frowned. “Do we just start looking for caves, then?”  
“We should keep to the base of the mountains,” Kai suggested. “I can’t see an old man setting up shop somewhere he’d have to use a mountain goat to get to and from.”  
“There’s only one way we can go,” Ariella said, pointing to the winding path leading away from the cave. “At least that makes looking for the cave a lot easier.”  
Somewhere behind them, the mountains rumbled. Ash looked up, confused. “Avalanche?”  
“I don’t think so,” Gluten mumbled and squinted.  
Kai looked up and immediately started shoving Gluten and Ariella towards the path. “Ogres. Let’s get going!”  
Ariella hiked up her robe and took off down the path, Ash and Kai close behind her. They were already well around a bend in the path when Ariella suddenly stopped. “Wait, where’s Gluten?”  
Ash screeched to a stop and looked around. “I thought Kai got her running.”  
Kai shook her head. “I did, but I don’t know if she kept running.”  
Ash muttered and drew her sword. “You two go ahead. I’m going back for her.”  
Somewhere back around the bend, there was a loud whoosh followed by loud rumbling and a giant cloud of dust. Gluten trotted out of the cloud, panting and beating out another fire on her shoulder. “Keep running! I think I got the ones coming after us, but more are going to start coming after that big thing.”  
“What did you even do?” Ariella panted as they started running again.  
“Firaga,” Gluten replied.  
“Into the side of the mountain?!”  
“Okay, less talking, more running,” Ash snapped and prodded both of them forward.  
By the time they stopped, they’d reached the end of the path. Gluten fell flat into the ground and groaned. “My legs are on fire.”  
“We just sprinted for a good mile,” Kai gasped. “I’m not surprised.”  
Ariella gasped for breath and pawed through the bag for the water flask. “Did anyone… see any caves?”  
Ash shook her head. “I forgot to look.”  
Kai groaned. “We’re going to have to go back and scour the entire path and fight ogres at the same time.”  
“Hey, look,” Gluten said. “A cave.”  
Everyone’s head snapped around to look where she was pointing. Tucked behind a large boulder was the wide mouth of a cave. Deeper in, Kai could see a set of torchlit steps leading deeper into the mountain.  
Ash blinked. “Well. That saves us some time.”  
"This is definitely not the northern tip of the continent, though," Kai mumbled. "We got some pretty inaccurate information."  
Ariella peeled Gluten off the ground and pushed her towards the stairs. “Help me down, please.”  
They disappeared into the cave. Ash shrugged and sheathed her sword. “I don’t think there would be monsters somewhere this well-lit.”  
“Probably not,” Kai agreed, and followed Ash in.  
The smell of herbs wafted over them as they descended into the cave. At the bottom, the tunnel took a sharp turn at the bottom of the steps to loop around behind them. Ash jogged ahead and looked around. “This feels really nice for a cave.”  
“It does,” Ariella agreed. “There’s a lot of magical power here, too. We’re definitely in the right place if we’re looking for a powerful sage.”  
Kai opened a blue door at the first corner and the herb smell got several times stronger. Lines of bubbling blue pots ran through the middle of the room. “What’s all this?”  
Gluten poked her head in and sniffed. “Monster repellent. Matoka had some as well. She probably had her brooms keeping watch in the tunnels, too, so hers was way less noticeable.”  
She tugged Kai out of the room and closed the door. “Let’s go. There’s probably another room deeper in.”  
The tunnel narrowed and took on a few more twists before ending at another blue door. Kai quickly felt around it for any trap locks, but felt nothing. She lifted her fist over the door. “Should I just knock?”  
Inside the door, something shuffled and someone harrumphed. “The door’s unlocked!”  
Kai jumped. “What the?”  
Ariella shrugged. “I guess we just go in?”  
Kai nodded and cautiously turned the knob. The door opened without so much as a creak. She gave it one last look before stepping in, Ariella, Ash and Gluten following close behind. “This is so much less fancy than Matoya’s cave.”  
The room was clean and simply furnished, more for function over impressiveness. A pot of monster repellent bubbled in the corner, wafting the herb smell throughout the entire room. An old man paced back and forth on the far end, turning when he heard the door close to gaze at them with eyes that Kai felt could see right down to her deepest subconscious. The old man cleared his throat. “Well. Hello there.”  
“Hi,” Ash replied with a polite nod. “Would you happen to be the sage Sadda?”  
“Yes, that is me,” the old man said. “You are the ones who defeated the vampire, eh?”  
“How did you know that was us?” Ariella asked, mildly bewildered.  
Sadda chuckled softly. “I have watched the Cavern of Earth for a long time. It was impossible not to know of the changes that occurred there.”  
Gluten visibly swallowed. “Then you know about the seal. Why couldn’t we break it?”  
“Simple,” Sadda said. “The vampire was not the one who placed it.”  
“Eh?” Ash blinked. “He wasn’t?”  
“He was the one causing Melmond problems, though,” Ariella pointed out. “He terrorized the village in person, he set up camp right near the Crystal to absorb its power… It can’t be anyone but him, right?”  
Sadda sighed and beckoned them to sit. Once they were settled, he turned to open his bedside drawer. “Well you are not wrong that the vampire has been drawing power from the Crystal. Nor are you wrong about the unfortunate effects he had on Melmond, and the Village of Earth before it.” He turned to look meaningfully at Gluten, who shrank deeper under her hat. “But he was only a servant… The beast corrupting the Earth Crystal lurks far deeper within the cavern. And it is a beast far more sinister than any vampire.”  
He turned to face them again. “I have no advice to offer those destined to be the Warriors of Light. But I will not let you go empty-handed. Here.” He held out a simple molded copper staff. “Take this staff with you and use it behind the vampire’s chamber! Then, the path will be revealed to you.”  
Ash reached out and took the staff. “Thank you. We’ll take care of it.”  
Sadda nodded. “May I remind you to face this fiend together. I sense that there is anger and revenge in mind concerning it. You must be careful not to let those feelings cloud your judgement, or all will be lost.”  
Ash, Ariella, and Kai nodded enthusiastically. Gluten shuffled a little, then nodded a little more reluctantly. Sadda’s eyes flickered, but he smiled and bowed to them. “Please, Warriors of Light. Restore the Crystals to grace…”

“I don’t understand why we can’t start heading back now.”  
Gluten swung her legs from where she was perched on a large rock, throwing pebbles into the side of the mountains. She’d fallen back into a bad mood after leaving Sadda’s cave.  
Ash pounded the last stake into the ground and grabbed the edge of the cottage tarp as Kai tossed it over the finished frame. “Because we’ve been traveling all day. You and Ariella have got to be completely drained of mana by now. Better rest up overnight before heading for the Cavern of Earth again.”  
“Besides,” Kai added as she tied the tarp in place. “This place has the best view of the sky, rotting earth or not. If we’re really going to risk dying tomorrow, we should have a good memory to take with us.”  
Ariella frowned. “Also shadows. And other undead. I don’t think I can handle any more without a good night’s rest.”  
“But people are dying,” Gluten protested. “The faster we take care of this ten-times-worse-than-vampires bastard, the faster everyone can start the recovery process. Why is everyone only thinking about resting right now?”  
“Because,” Kai snapped and turned towards her, “we need to rest. If we rush for the Cavern right now, we wouldn’t even make it through the first floor. We’d probably get to the entrance, trip down the stairs or run into a bat, then fall over and die. So unless you especially want to die an epically embarrassing death, we’re camping here for the night.”  
Gluten rolled her eyes and turned to face the other way.  
Ash tied down the last corner and dusted off her hands. “All set up. Shall we get some much-needed shut-eye?”  
Ariella sighed happily. “I’m all for it. I’m exhausted.”  
“You’re just scared of ghouls,” Gluten muttered.  
Ariella spun around, glaring. “I dare you to say that again.”  
Ash quickly spun her back around by the shoulders and guided her towards the cottage, smiling good-naturedly. “Okay, okay. I think we’re all very tired. The only thing left to do is set up the bedding, and we can all go to sleep. Sounds good?”  
Ariella grumbled, but let herself be pushed inside. Ash dropped her smile and turned to glare at Gluten. “Look, I know this is a sensitive thing for you and you’re tired, but you need to chill.”  
Gluten huffed and hopped off the rock. “Whatever.”  
She pushed past Ash and closed the door flap with a snap. Ash sighed. “I feel bad.”  
“Let her get over it,” Kai said and stretched. “Let’s get some sleep, too. First thing in the morning, we’ll head straight for the Cavern. We’ll break the seal, fight the monster, figure out how to restore the Crystal, and come out more or less unscathed.”  
Ash nodded. “You’re right. We have to be in top condition for that.”  
Kai gave her a thumbs up. “Awesome. With a plan like this, nothing can go wrong.”


	11. The Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ****  
> _QUICK CONTENT WARNING: A WHOLE VILLAGE LITERALLY STARVES TO DEATH IN THIS ONE. ALSO PEOPLE EAT THEIR PETS AND SUFFER FROM A PLAGUE. SKIP ALL OF THE ITALICS IF YOU DON'T FEEL COMFORTABLE._  
>  Gluten abandons her friends and goes to avenge her village… alone. In her final moments, her life flashes before her eyes.

QUICK CONTENT WARNING: A WHOLE VILLAGE LITERALLY STARVES TO DEATH IN THIS ONE. ALSO PEOPLE EAT THEIR PETS AND SUFFER FROM A PLAGUE. SKIP ALL OF THE ITALICS IF YOU DON'T FEEL COMFORTABLE.

The sun was just rising when Gluten pulled herself up and out of the cave, holding tight to Sadda’s staff. The smooth metal clanged against the rocks, and she cursed under her breath and clapped it into the grass to mute it. She couldn’t afford to make any noise or attract any monsters to herself. There would be no way she could take a horde on by herself.  
Ash or Kai had to have noticed that she was gone by now. She’d snuck out of the cottage as soon as she heard Kai start snoring, and had been running and hiding from monsters all night. With this much distance between them, Gluten was confident that the others wouldn’t pop up unexpectedly behind her, but she still had to keep moving. She kind of missed the feeling of three extra people to travel with, but she quickly squashed the feeling. She couldn’t let anyone fight the fiend guarding the Crystal for her, no matter what Sadda had said.  
The openness of the field left her feeling vulnerable. Even in the barely-there glow of dawn, the grass seemed to absorb every ray of light into a dark void, leaving her as a bright blue and yellow target. It was nothing like the sweeping fields of wheat that she’d loved running through as a child and had felt completely secure in. She hated it, and hated whatever fiend caused it even more, and she let that anger motivate her forward despite her melting leg muscles.  
She was shaking with anger by the time she made it to the entrance of the Cavern of Earth. The mouth gaped at her sinisterly, absorbing even more light than the grass. The stagnant, rotting air blew out at her, as if daring her to enter alone. Gluten growled and summoned a fireball the size of a melon, then marched straight in.  
The group of gargoyles settled at the bottom of the steps barely had time to look up before they were met in the face with a volley of flames. Gluten didn’t even bother waiting for them to finish screeching before kicking her way through them. There was a rustling from down the tunnel, and a wall of cobras, tarantulas, more gargoyles and a minotaur came rushing at her. She clapped her hands and threw them out. “Firaga, [CENSORED]s!”  
A thick pillar of flame shot from each of her hands, hitting the minotaur straight on. The smell of burning beef wafted through the air as it screamed, thrashing and kicking the other monsters surrounding it into the flames. More rancid smells filled the hallway as the monsters burned. Hundreds of half-dead tarantulas scattered from the burning mass, weakly reaching for the walls before collapsing and disintegrating. Gluten smacked her way through the rest of the monsters still writhing in the flames with the staff and kept walking.  
When she reached the entrance to the second floor, she picked up a large shard left over from the boulder and dropped it down. There was a loud squelch, followed by more sounds of jellies moving to investigate the intruding object. Gluten lay the staff down carefully and used both hands to shoot plumes of flame through the entrance. In the firelight, she could see dozens of jellies writhing and evaporating when they couldn’t escape her flames fast enough. When she was satisfied, she picked up the staff and hopped down. Almost immediately, a flock of cockatrices thundered down the hall towards her. She summoned another fireball and hurled it in their direction, hitting and incinerating all but one, which let out a terrified squawk and wheeled around to flap back down the hall. Gluten took off after it and smacked it into the wall with the staff, leaving it twitching in a dent in the wall.  
Her resolve wavered a little as she passed through the tunnel with the skeleton. He hadn’t moved since the last time she was there. His hand was still clasped tightly around his sword, and his jaw had stayed locked in desperate determination. Gluten knelt down and reached out carefully for his face. A layer of dust and ash came off as she brushed his cheekbone, and she swallowed back the urge to cry. “Hang in there. I’ll make sure you rest in peace soon.”  
Before the prickling sensation in her eyes could grow any stronger, she scrambled to her feet and hurried down the tunnel.  
The third floor of the Cavern stood no more of a chance than the first two. Even a pair of piscodemons that appeared seemingly out of nowhere were no match for Gluten, who switched to Thundara and then back to Firaga effortlessly. It wasn’t long before she stood before the door to the vampire’s chamber again. It stood ajar, as she and the others had left it the first time they’d passed through. Gluten carefully prodded it further open, then stepped into the chamber.  
Despite the lack of the vampire, nothing else had moved in besides a few harmless spiders busy building a network of webs in the corner. Even the door to the seal had been left untouched. Gluten could feel something draining coming from behind down the tunnel, and she had to force herself to put one foot in front of the other until she had entered the tunnel.  
The seal was still there in all its sinister glory. Gluten could practically feel the waves of evil energy radiating straight through the stone tile, and it made her want to turn around and run back out. She smacked herself lightly, then brought the staff down on the seal as hard as she could.  
At first, there was nothing but the ringing of metal on stone echoing back through the tunnel. Then, one by one, the characters on the surface began to glow until line after line of them lit up the tunnel and reflected off the surface of the staff. From the point of contact with the staff, the stone tile began crumbling into dust and collapsing into the floor until nothing was left but a narrow stairway into the darkness. The waves of evil energy washed over Gluten, magnified hundredfold and absolutely rank with decay. She pulled her collar firmly over her nose, strapped the staff to her back, and reached into her pocket for her crystal, which glowed and vibrated excitedly.  
The fourth floor of the Cavern was even darker than the previous floors, and frigid. Gluten shivered and summoned a fireball for light and warmth. She nearly screamed when the firelight reflected in hundreds of spots along the walls and down the tunnel as what seemed like the entire floor’s worth of monsters--hill gigases, lizards, jellies, wolves, goblins, and too many undead for her to count--all snapped their heads around to look at her. Without thinking, she fueled the fireball until it spanned from floor to ceiling and shot it down the tunnel. The roar of the fireball mixed with the dying shrieks of the monsters as they caught fire and lit the tunnel brighter than any torches that Gluten had ever seen. She took the chance to run down the tunnel as fast as she could, careful to sidestep any monsters too charred to stay attached to the walls and occasionally glancing down at the crystal in her palm as it vibrated and wobbled from side to side like a compass.  
There seemed to be monsters around every corner. Gluten could feel herself slowly getting tired as she sent out Firaga after Firaga, but she forced herself to keep going. There was nowhere to hide from the sheer volume of monsters. She wouldn’t have much of a choice but to burn her way through until she reached either the Crystal or a flight of stairs to a lower level.  
Her crystal spun sharply to the right in her palm. Gluten followed it and sighed in relief as she caught sight of a hole in the floor. Behind her, a hill gigas rounded the corner, and she bolted for the hole and slid through it and down a slope until she hit the floor below.  
The magnitude of the evil energy and the smell of decay was so great that Gluten nearly vomited. The crystal shook violently in her palm. Sighing, she forced herself to stand and follow its direction through the floor.  
The tunnels were strangely quiet. Gluten lit another fireball and waved it in front of her. A few tarantulas scattered from the light, but other than that there didn’t seem to be any large monsters anywhere. Holding the fireball in front of her, she carefully waded through the tarantulas in the direction the crystal pointed.  
Finally, she came to a red door at the end of a corridor. In her palm, the crystal shone brighter than ever but had suddenly gone still. She swallowed hard, extinguished her fireball, and pushed the door open.  
The space beyond it was covered in so many stalactites and stalagmites, there was barely enough floor space for a narrow walkway and a large pedestal at the center. On it hovered a crystal almost three times Gluten’s height, magnificently identical to the small one in her hand except for the dull darkness that seemed to swirl and palpate beneath the surface. This had to be the Earth Crystal, but it was hardly recognizable. The energy that it emitted was completely wrong.  
Gluten shook her head with disbelief. “This can’t be right. What happened to you?”  
She spun around, scanning the room carefully. “Is anyone here? Show yourself! I can feel you here.”  
The air in front of her crackled, and a glowing golden orb materialized at the end of the walkway in front of the darkened Crystal. It crackled, and a voice hissed from it. “Who speaks to me?”  
“Who are you?” Gluten shouted at the orb. “What have you done to the Crystal?!”  
The orb wavered and grew until Gluten could make out a skeletal robed figure in the center. As he outgrew the orb and materialized, the stench of decay grew overwhelming. Gluten had to screw her eyes shut and wipe away reflexive tears.  
When she opened her eyes again, a tall, broad-shouldered skeleton towered over her. Its heavy fur-lined cloak billowed and waves of the same evil energy she’d felt the entire way down seemed to roll off with each sweep of the fabric. The gray jewels dripping off of its horned purple skullcap clinked against bone as the skeleton bent down to get a better look at Gluten, its eyes burning with a strangely lightless fire. It opened its jaws in excitement. “My, and what do we have here? A child from the fallen Village of Earth, I see.”  
“You,” Gluten managed to say, trembling. From fear, rage, or both, she didn’t care to figure out. “You’ve been stealing the Crystal’s energy, haven’t you? My friends and family starved for years and fell to plague… because of you.”  
The skeleton rumbled. To Gluten, it sounded mockingly like a laugh. She gritted her teeth and glared back at it, shaking definitely more from rage than from fear now. “I watched my neighbors, then my friends, then my parents, my brothers… all of them wasted away right in front of me. Because you were here.”  
The skeleton rumbled louder and its jaw opened even more. Gluten yelled and fired up her fist. “Firaga!”  
The combined force of the punch and the fire exploding on the skeleton’s sternum sent it flying back into the Crystal. It stopped itself against the pedestal and looked up at Gluten, eyes brighter. Almost amused.  
Gluten fired up her fist again and growled. “This ends here! I’m stopping you right here and now and making you pay for what you did to my home and Melmond, you [CENSORED] [EXTRA CENSORED] piece of [CENSORED]!!!”  
The skeleton threw back its head and cackled. “Interesting! How very commendable of you!”  
It lowered its head to glower at Gluten. “Yes. I am he who feeds on the power of the earth. I am he who is responsible for the fall of the Village of Earth and the decline of Melmond.”  
It threw back its head again and cackled even louder. “Undisturbed have I lay for ten years, for mortals could not reach me. Still, I will not be disturbed by mortal men. I am Lich… Fiend of Earth!”  
It let out a rattling breath and summoned a blizzard in its palm. “And I shall continue to feed off the power of the earth. For century upon century, millenia upon millenia, until there is nothing left to feed me. And there is absolutely nothing you or anyone else can do to stop me.”  
Gluten screamed and launched another huge fireball at Lich. It hit it square in the chest and it staggered, dispersing the blizzard. Gluten quickly raised both hands to grow another fireball. “Over my [CENSORED] dead body.”  
She snapped her fingers, and a small flame flickered to life, only to fizzle out barely a second later. She snapped her fingers again, dread spreading over her from head to toe as she barely managed to produce a spark. “No.”  
Lich cackled, earsplitting and cacophonous. The blizzard had reformed in its hands, this time larger than before. Gluten snapped her fingers furiously. “Oh no. No no no no. Come on, light up! [CENSORED]!”  
Cold, penetrating darkness surrounded her, and the world went silent.

_The sun shone warm on Gluten’s face as she lay in the soft pile of discarded wheat stalks. The golden color was perfect for a new sunhat. She’d have to beg her mother to make her one in the next few days.  
The crunch of boots pattering over the dried field got her to look up just in time to see Cereas take a running leap into the stalk pile, his cheeks bouncing with each step. She squealed as he landed half on top of her and they both rolled off, giggling as they hit the dirt. She reached over and pushed his face into the grass. “You flatted me!”  
“You were fine,” Cereas brushed her off. “You were in a pile of hay. Besides, you’re so chubby you couldn’t be flattened if we let the cows run you over.”  
“Hey!”  
Cereas dodged Gluten’s tiny angry fist, still giggling. “Chubby chubby!”  
Gluten’s eyes prickled. “Cere! You’re so mean!”  
“What are you kids doing?”  
Both of them scrambled to their feet as Gluten’s second brother Pyrenus lumbered over. Gluten jabbed an accusatory finger at Cereas and hiccupped. “Cere called me chubby!”  
Cereas blinked owlishly.  
Pyrenus glanced back and forth between them dissolved into laughter. Gluten pouted harder. “What’s so funny?”  
“He’s not wrong, Glutes,” Pyrenus chuckled. “You’re very chubby.”  
“See?” Cereas crowed, forgetting that he was supposed to act innocent. “I told you!”  
Pyrenus turned to him and frowned. “But Cereas! You’re chubby too!”  
“Ha!” Gluten turned and shouted in Cereas’s ear. “You’re chubby too!”  
Cereas scowled. “But… but… you’re chubbier!”  
Gluten wailed in protest and flailed her arms at him.  
Pyrenus grabbed her and settled her against his shoulder. “Alright, there, don’t be hitting him now. Being chubby is a good thing!”  
“Really?” Gluten immediately perked up.  
“Yeah!” Pyrenus assured her. “If you weren’t chubby, you wouldn’t have these lovely little cheeks for me to kiss and poke.” He peppered Gluten’s cheeks with kisses, drawing out a giggle.  
“And if Cereas wasn’t chubby, he wouldn’t have these lovely, soft little hands for me to rub my face on.” He took one of Cereas’s hands and gently rubbed the palm against his chin, making Cereas squeal ticklishly.  
“And if neither of you were chubby, who would I hug if I’m feeling sad?” He pulled Cereas and Gluten both into a tight bear hug, complete with exaggerated sobbing until they hugged him back, both full-on laughing now.  
Finally they let go of each other, and Pyrenus ruffled both of their heads, smiling. “You know what else? Since you’re both so cute and chubby, it lets all the grown-ups know that you have enough food to eat, and that you’re not sick, and that you have enough energy to grow up big and strong. Because you’re both chubby, Cereas’s mom and dad and our mom and dad can rest assured that you’re healthy, growing children, and they have nothing to worry about. Isn’t chubby a good thing, then?”  
Gluten and Cereas both nodded earnestly, and Pyrenus’s smile widened. “Good! I’m glad you both understand that.”_

_Nothing was more relaxing than kneading dough under the bright afternoon sun.  
Mom plopped two lumps of freshly mixed dough onto the porch table in front of Gluten and came to stand next to her, rerolling her bright blue sleeves. “Ready?”  
Gluten nodded enthusiastically and went hands-first into the dough. She and Mom quickly fell into a rhythm of folding, pushing, and pulling, all to the time of the harvest hymn her mother hummed as she worked. Once they had finished with their lumps of dough, they dropped them into special covered baskets made especially for the dough to grow and picked up new lumps of dough to knead. Over the afternoon, the two of them could easily go through forty lumps each.  
Next to Gluten, Mom suddenly stopped humming and her hands stilled. Gluten looked up to see her looking towards the village gate and frowning. “Mom, what’s wrong?”  
“That’s strange,” Mom said, then dropped everything and hurried off the porch. Gluten quickly dusted flour off her hands and trotted after her.  
Dad, Pyrenus, Cereas’s father Mr. Mulberry, and some of the other farmers had come back. Gluten ran to Dad, arms stretched out to be picked up, until she saw the somber look on everyone’s faces. Mom pulled her close and reached for Dad. “Honey. What happened?”  
“The wheat crop isn’t taking,” Dad said, sounding bewildered. “It’s been in decline for a few years now, but not a single seed took this year. It’s very strange.”  
“The soil condition’s been getting worse, too,” Mr. Mulberry added. “Inexplicably. We’ve rotated the crops like normal, and this is the first time this has happened.”  
“Strange indeed,” Mom mused. “Maybe we should change the rotation?”  
Dad nodded. “Good idea. I’ll pitch it to Elder Zea and see what she says.”  
Mom wrung her hands. “I hope it’s just this batch of seed. We have enough to spare and try again, but if this is long term… I don’t know about the bakery…”  
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Pyrenus assured her. “Soya said the potatoes are still doing decently. Worst comes to worst, we could switch to potato bread to keep the bakery going.”  
Mom’s face melted in relief. “I didn’t think of that. Yes, that’s a wonderful idea.”  
She smiled. “I’m so fortunate. I have a talented farmer for a husband, two ingenious sons, and a wonderful daughter to help me in the bakery. Crystals, I’m truly blessed.”_

_First, the wheat and beans rotted in the ground.  
Then, the potatoes and other tubers followed soon after.  
Soon after that, the ground gourds and fruits began to rot on the vine.  
Without crops to make flour, the bakery closed, and Gluten spent more and more time wandering in the fields and orchards, searching for stray fruits or vegetable leaves for Mom and baby Peanut.  
She passed close under an apple tree and jumped when a body fell out right in front of her. It shifted and moaned and she grumbled. “Crystals, Cereas, you’re going to scare me to death one of these days.”  
Cereas lifted his head from the ground and grinned stupidly. His arms and legs had thinned out, but slivers of fat still stubbornly rounded out his cheeks. “Sorry.”  
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a splotched red apple. “Peace offering?”  
“Where did you get this?” Gluten asked and snatched the apple away to inspect it. “I haven’t seen an apple this solid since before Peanut was born.”  
“There’s a lot at the top of the tree,” Cereas explained, “furthest point from the roots. Maybe something in the soil doesn’t reach them up there.”  
He pulled another one from his pocket and handed it to her. “You can take these two. I know how much Peanut likes apples. I can always climb up and get more.”  
“Thanks,” Gluten said shyly.  
Cereas shrugged and fell into step beside her. “How’s your mom doing lately?”  
“Depressed,” Gluten sighed. “She misses baking. Not much you can make bread out of, though, unless we try dirt or sand.”  
“That sucks,” Cereas said somberly. “The bakery was her life. Is there anything else you could get her to try?”  
“Weaving used to be her back-up,” Gluten said. “That relied so much on either plants or the sheep, though. The sheep aren’t even eating well enough to produce wool though. Our family’s so tied to the field and wheat in particular, it’s almost impossible to function with it gone.”  
Cereas patted her shoulder comfortingly. “I get you. I promise, it’s going to get better. Maybe next year, the soil will be fertile again. We’ll be able to plant what’s left of the last wheat harvest, and your mom can open up her bakery again. From there, it’ll just get better and better until life is good again.”_

_When Gluten’s eldest brother Soya came in from the yard holding the first dead chicken, nobody thought much of it at first.  
“I don’t understand,” Mom mused distantly, barely paying attention to Peanut crawling across the floor to stick his hands in the empty fireplace. Even in a village where everyone was becoming more and more thin-faced, her cheeks were still hollow beyond anything Gluten had ever seen in a living person. It was as if the inability to bake had drained just as much out of her as the lack of food.“Wasn’t that a healthy one?”  
“They’ve all been skinny for months,” Soya muttered and dropped the chicken on the kitchen table so he could run and catch Peanut. “They were bound to start dropping sooner or later.”  
The front door opened and Dad and Pyrenus stomped out dirt and half-liquefied grass on their way in. Gluten quickly stood and pulled out a chair for Dad, who sank into it with a sigh. “Crops are all gone, except for what we had stored. The livestock are dying over at Mulberry’s place. Chickens are dying in bulk, or something like that.”  
He turned and noticed the dead chicken on the kitchen table and sighed. “Well, it looks like ours are going, too.”  
“Half the coop is dead,” Soya said. “Just flopped over in the nests. Eggs were so delicate I got one all over me trying to pick it up.”  
Pyrenus frowned. “We can’t just leave them out there. They’ll attract monsters into town if we don’t get rid of them.”  
“We could eat them,” Soya suggested. “They’re still meat.”  
Gluten shook her head. “But we raised them for so long. Isn’t it kind of sad?”  
“Soya’s got a point, though,” Dad said, shaking his head. “It’d be a shame to throw them away. Better we make use of what’s left.”  
Mom struggled to stand and huffed as she walked slowly towards the chicken. “Wait. Let me see it.”  
She ran a finger over the beak and eyelids and frowned. “I’m not sure about these blisters. How do we know they won’t pass on to us if we eat these?”  
“We’re not eating it raw,” Soya half-snapped. “Obviously we’re going to boil it thoroughly first.”  
Mom frowned. “I don’t know…”  
“It should be fine,” Pyrenus sighed. “If it’s boiled, maybe it’ll kill whatever sickness it had. It should be safe to eat then.”  
“I don’t want to eat the chickens, though,” Gluten protested. “I raised half of them from when they were chicks. They’re my babies.”  
“Well, they’re food now,” Soya said matter-of-factly. “They’re dead now, and you’re not. We were raising them for food anyway. What difference does it make to eat them now?”  
He turned to look pointedly at Dad. “Dad. Say something.”  
“Kids,” Dad protested weakly.  
“I can’t eat them though,” Gluten insisted, her voice wavering with tears. “I fed them, I kept them warm, and I helped Pyrenus build the coop. I used to call them by name and they’d come to me. Chickpea, Gertrude, Gillian, Kylee--”  
“You let her name them?” Soya suddenly snapped at Pyrenus. “I thought we weren’t letting her get attached to them.”  
“What did you want me to say?” Pyrenus shot back, standing up hard enough to knock his chair back. “She was eight years old! We were supposed to get a good five, six years out of them and by then she would fully understand butchering. How did I know they were going to all drop dead from whatever avian plague is spreading through town?”  
“Boys, stop yelling at each other--”  
“Who cares how old she was? They’re for food! You don’t let kids get attached to food!”  
“Both of you need to calm down--”  
“Well I’m sorry I let my little sister have a heart in these tough times,” Pyrenus yelled. “Unlike someone who apparently ate his for food.”  
Soya grabbed the chicken and flung it into Pyrenus’s face, roaring. The kitchen erupted into a flurry of limbs and shouting as the two boys wrestled over, around, and through the tables and chairs, their parents grabbing at them from behind and beating their fists to try and force them to let go. Peanut sat on the rug, bawling. Gluten wished she could just collapse and cry too. But no respectable twelve-year-old could cry like a baby in front of her entire family, so she pushed past everyone and ran for the yard, where she climbed into the chicken coop and locked the door.  
It was dark out by the time the door to the coop opened and Pyrenus pokes his head in with a lantern. In the dim light, made foggy by the leftover film of tears over her eyes, Gluten could make out a new cut and some swollen bruises on his face as he stepped inside and knelt next to her. She shrank herself smaller and sniffled hard, clutching tight to the chicken in her arms.  
Pyrenus’s hand came down gently on her shoulder. “Which one is this?”  
“Karen,” Gluten sniffled.  
Pyrenus hummed in understanding. “And which’s the one in the kitchen?”  
Gluten let out a long snort and wiped her nose. “That was Barnabus.”  
Pyrenus’s gentle patting faltered. “You named a hen Barnabus?”  
“She always followed the roosters around and made rooster noises,” Gluten explained. “I think she wanted to be a boy, so I gave her a boy name.”  
“Well that’s very clever of you,” Pyrenus said. “Are you sad that she died?”  
Gluten shook her head and held her chicken tighter. “All living things die one day. I knew all of the chickens would die soon, so I’m not particularly sad. I just don’t want to eat her.”  
“I see,” Pyrenus hummed. “You know we were raising them to eat, right?”  
“I know,” Gluten whined. “But still.”  
Pyrenus nodded and pulled her close. “Listen to me, Glutes. All of the crops in the fields are dying, no matter what we do for them. If they could still grow, I would say we could bury Barnabus and all the rest next to the wheat field, right next to Marcus the rooster. They would be absorbed into the ground, and they could help us grow delicious wheat that would make delicious bread. But right now, if we bury them, they wouldn’t be absorbed. They would just stay there until they’re rotten, and they couldn’t even help the plants grow. That’s why Soya thinks it’s a good idea to eat them. This way, they can help you and Peanut still have energy to grow, and their lives won’t have gone to waste. It could be like a special kind of funeral, just for the chickens. What do you think?”  
Gluten nodded reluctantly, then put down her chicken and followed Pyrenus back to the house.  
The table had already been set. Peanut sat on the floor, happily munching on a boiled drumstick. Mom sat next to him, nibbling at the wings. Dad and Soya sat silently at the table, picking apart the head and half of the breast together. Pyrenus took a plate with the other half of the breast, and pushed the last drumstick to Gluten. “Here.”  
Gluten dropped heavily into her chair and took a reluctant bite, feeling unbearably guilty for thinking it was delicious._

_Cereas suddenly disappeared for over a month. Gluten couldn’t find him in the remains of the fields, in the orchards where even the topmost fruits had gone rotten, or even at his house, where Mr. Mulberry had quickly turned her away when she knocked on the door.  
When he finally reappeared, his face had dropped the last of his baby fat and then some, and huge, ugly scars and blisters riddled his skin past his neck.  
“What happened to you?” Gluten asked in bewilderment and reached up to inspect one of the blisters.  
Cereas gently moved her hand away. Even his hands were covered in blisters. “It’s nothing. I probably caught the pox or something.”  
“The pox is supposed to go away after a few weeks,” Gluten pointed out. “Why are you still blistery?”  
Cereas shrugged. “ I don’t know. My mom and dad have it too, though.”  
Gluten frowned. “Do you have any medicine to treat it? Maybe we could go to Melmond and see if they have potions or an antidote.”  
Cereas shook his head. “We tried those already. The antidote did nothing. The potions help for a little while, but they don’t stop the blisters from spreading.”  
He sighed in frustration. “We’re running out of those, now. Dad’s been saying that since we haven’t had even a bad harvest in years, there’s no money to restock. I don’t even know if Dad’s strong enough to make it all the way to Melmond right now.”  
His shoulders shook as he tried to suppress the tears that came up. Gluten didn’t know if she was allowed to touch him or not._

_They notice that Peanut got the pox first.  
He squirmed uncomfortably and fussed as Dad inspected the blisters gathering around his nose. “Ow, Daddy.”  
“Sorry, love,” Dad said distractedly. “How did you get these?”  
“The Valencias all got the same blisters,” Pyrenus thought out loud. “Their chickens died recently, and all had the same symptoms. They must’ve caught it from them.”  
“But we ate our last chicken last year,” Soya muttered. “Where could Peanut have gotten it?”  
Suddenly his face fell. “Glutes, check all the pots.”  
Gluten threw open the pantry door and pulled out every pot she could find. She and Soya frantically began opening and closing all the lids, then all the boxes, barrels, and cabinets they could think of until she threw open the oven and found a half-eaten chicken. “Here!”  
Soya pushed her aside. “Don’t touch it.”  
He pulled off his shirt and wrapped his hand in it before reaching in and pulling out the carcass. Its head hung limply and Gluten could see the giant blisters covering its nostrils and eyelids.  
Soya ripped off a chunk of the breast and sniffed at the pink flesh. “It’s going ripe.”  
“Where did we even get that?” Pyrenus wondered.  
“Honey, what’s all the commotion?”  
Mom, thin and wasted as the last beanstalk the village had ever seen, appeared in the doorway. She looked around at everyone with glazed eyes until she saw the carcass in Soya’s hand. Her jaw dropped. “Oh no. The chicken.”  
“Honey.” Dad pointed to the chicken. “Where did you get this?”  
“Oh.” Mom looked confused for a moment. “From the Valencias, I think. Two days ago. Peanut was so hungry...”  
“Did you boil it?” Pyrenus asked. “Thoroughly?”  
Mom hummed. “It looked roasted when I got it…”  
“Mom,” Soya said, voice steady but hand shaking. “Did you boil this chicken before you fed it to Peanut? Yes or no?”  
Gluten looked back and forth between everyone anxiously. Mom blinked slowly, then shook her head once. Soya pulled his shirt over the carcass and stormed for the door. “Nobody’s eating this thing.”  
Mom lunged after him desperately. “No!”  
Dad quickly grabbed her around the waist and struggled to hold her back. “Pyrenus, help me.”  
Pyrenus grabbed Mom around her chest and started pushing her back towards the other room. She clawed at him and Dad frantically. “Let me go! That’s Peanut’s dinner!”  
“Gluten, take Peanut and get out,” Pyrenus called over his shoulder. “I’ll come find you later.”  
Gluten nodded and pulled Peanut up by his arm, trying to keep her voice steady. “Let’s go out and play, yeah?”  
Mom’s screams still pierced her ears long after she and Peanut had left the house._

_“I understand,” Elder Zea shouted down from her barrel, “That this is a difficult time for us. Our crops are gone. Our livestock are all but gone. And now, the hunger and plague is taking us one by one.”  
Next to Gluten, Cereas’s sobs racked his body hard enough to throw him off balance. His blisters had gone, so she had one arm carefully wrapped around him to keep him upright.  
In the middle of the town square lay dozens of corpses of men, women, children, babies, and various livestock, all covered head to toe with angry red blisters. All of the human corpses lay face-down, but Gluten knew it didn’t help much. Cereas could always recognize his mother and father, no matter which way they were facing.  
“I know that the hunger we all feel is unbearable,” Elder Zea continued. “However, we must not give in to temptation and consume our fallen family. I say this not to preserve our dignity or humanity, but to protect our health. All you see before you have been taken by the infectious plague. Boiling is ineffective as the infection grows stronger. If we eat them, the plague will take us faster and more painfully than starvation ever could.”  
She turned to a couple of villagers waiting with torches. “For our protection against such a fate, we have no choice but to destroy these bodies.”  
Cereas sobbed even harder and turned to bury his face in Gluten’s shoulder as the villagers threw their torches and the pile of bodies burst into flame._

_Gluten woke in the middle of the night to a gnaw in her stomach, worse than ever before. She grumbled and turned to bury her face into Pyrenus’s bony shoulder.  
Suddenly there was a sob and some whimpering from the bedroom, and Gluten bolted upright. Careful not to disturb her brothers, she pushed herself off the mattress and tiptoed to the other room.  
Mom was standing over Peanut’s angrily blistered sleeping form, face locked in an absent gaze and lit by the flickering of a fireball swirling in her palm. Her voice wavered, high-pitched as she half-chanted, half-sang a lullaby down at Peanut, and she turned her hand to aim at him.  
Gluten’s hand was on fire before she even realized that she’d moved. Her scream triggered a frantic rustling from her parents’ bed as Dad sprang up and grabbed hold of her mother. “What are you doing?!”  
Mom let out a long wail. “He’s dying! He’s in so much pain! How could I do this to him?”  
“Nonsense,” Dad grunted, and forced her back into the bed. “You love your children! You wanted to feed him! It’s not your fault!”  
“I’m killing him,” she cried. “I’m killing my son…”  
Footsteps thundered from the other room, and Pyrenus and Soya came barreling through the door. Soya ran to help Dad hold Mom against the mattress while Pyrenus went to sooth Peanut, who had woken up and started whimpering. “What in the name of the Crystals is happening?”  
“One of you,” Dad strained over his shoulder, “there’s a spellbook on the table. Close it for me. Hurry!”  
“I got it,” Gluten said and felt across the bedside table until she found the edges of the book. She slammed it shut. “What now?”  
“Lock it in the chest in the kitchen. Key’s in that drawer. Throw the key away when you’re done.”  
Gluten heaved the book to her chest and threw open the bedside drawer to feel for the key. Her hand throbbed and stung where it was touching the book. She could think of fewer times that made her happier than the moment she dropped the book into the chest and slammed the lid shut.  
She left the key buried under the remains of the chicken coop._

_Peanut died a few days later, followed closely by Mom.  
Dad and Soya didn’t bother notifying Elder Zea, who at this point wasn’t even strong enough to sit up in bed. They cremated the bodies behind the house._

_When Gluten woke up, Pyrenus was cold as ice and wasn’t breathing.  
Her whimpering woke Soya, who struggled to sit up and call for Dad.  
It was only then that they realized that Dad was even colder._

_“Let’s go find the Earth Crystal,” Cereas suddenly suggested.  
Gluten turned to frown at him. “Why this all of a sudden?”  
“I heard from my parents before they died,” Cereas explained, “that in the cavern just north of us lies the Earth Crystal. We’re the closest village in the world to it, and that’s why our harvests were always especially good. I bet everything that’s happened these last nine years is because something’s wrong with the Crystal.”  
“You don’t know that, though,” Gluten said. “Besides, that cavern is full to the gills with monsters. Grown men don’t even want to go in. What makes you think a couple of starving kids is going to make it somewhere healthy adults wouldn’t even set foot in?”  
“We can hide really easily,” Cereas replied. “We’re small enough to not be noticed by the big monster, and still strong enough to take on the smaller ones with a decent chance of winning. We’ll be fine.”  
“Maybe the first bit close to the entrance,” Gluten scoffed. “What about deeper down? What if we run into something like a vampire? We don’t even have garlic to protect ourselves from something like that. And what if the Crystal isn’t even there?”  
She shook her head and stood up. “It’s a terrible idea, Cereas. We’re better off staying put. We need to figure out how to survive here, with what we have, and rebuild before we all starve to death.”_

_Gluten yanked her sword out of the tarantula’s head, recoiling a little as fluid squirted out. The mummy toppled over and thudded against the tunnel ground.  
Next to her, Cereas kicked over a gargoyle and turned to grin at her. “See? We’re doing fine.”  
Gluten grinned shakily and nodded. “Yeah. I guess we’re doing okay.”  
“Let’s keep going, then,” Cereas said, then turned the corner. “One more floor!”  
Neither of them saw the troll until it was too late.  
Cereas barely had the chance to look up before a giant purple hand came crashing down out of nowhere, nearly hitting him. He turned and pushed Gluten back up the tunnel. “Run!”  
They took off running down the tunnel, the troll’s footsteps echoing after them. Behind Gluten, Cereas grunted and thudded to the ground. Before she could turn to grab him, the troll thundered out of the darkness and grabbed him, hurling him into the wall. He gagged red and Gluten screamed. “Cereas!”  
The troll looked up to focus on Gluten. It’s eyes flashed angrily in the light of her torch and its mouth foamed as it roared. She froze to the spot.  
Behind it, Cereas shouted and drove his sword into the troll’s thigh. It roared again and turned to grab him, crushing him in its hand. Cereas forced his sword out and stabbed at the troll’s arm, gritting his teeth. “Gluten, throw your torch!”  
“No!” Gluten shouted. “You’ll burn!”  
“Don’t worry about me, worry about the troll!” Cereas gasped.  
Gluten hesitated just a second longer, then hurled the torch to hit the troll square in the back. It screamed as the flames spread over its back and up its hair, and it dropped Cereas in a panic. Cereas struggled to his feet and held himself up against the wall. “Okay, now run. I’ll catch up.”  
Gluten blocked out everything as she ran for the stairs back to the first floor. She heard Cereas scream behind her, and fought back a sob as she kept running.  
She didn’t know how she knew Cereas wasn’t right behind her, or how she got the boulder into the stairway. She didn’t know how she had the strength to run all the way back to the village. All she knew was that when she got home, she’d never seen that much fire in her life, or heard that many monsters and humans fighting in one place._

_The only thing left of the once lively and prosperous Village of Earth was a charred metal chest, warped and blackened by the fire.  
Gluten didn’t even need the key to force it open. Inside were her mother’s spellbook, some of her brothers’ and her baby clothes, and a bright blue dress and golden pointed sunhat, all miraculously untouched by the fire.  
Gluten could feel the tears coming again as she lifted the book and the clothes out of the chest and held them to her face. Even mixed with the smell of smoke, she could still smell her family in them.  
Something sparkly fell out of the pocket of the dress. Gluten frowned and reached down to pick it up. It was a tiny golden crystal, about the length of her little finger, that seemed to shine from somewhere within. She sighed and pocketed it. If it was in her mother’s things, it didn’t seem right to leave it behind.  
First things first, she had to get to Melmond and find somewhere to stay and something to eat._

“Gluten?”  
Gluten mumbled and shifted a little. Her entire body hurt and her head was pounding.  
“Gluten, wake up.”  
She grumbled again and cracked her eyes open.  
Ariella was hovering over her, face screwed with worry. Behind her Gluten could make out Kai and Ash bandaging up and sipping on potions. She blinked the fogginess out of her eyes and mumbled again. “I thought we were saving those.”  
“We were,” Ash replied, “but Ariella’s drained. We kind of needed them.”  
“Sit up slowly,” Ariella said as she helped her up. “You were out for a while.”  
A cold wave of panic washed over Gluten and she bolted straight up, ignoring the throbbing in her head. “Where’s Lich?”  
“Where’s who?” Ash asked.  
“The Fiend of Earth,” Gluten babbled. “The, the, the big skeleton guy. It was leeching off the Crystal, and--”  
“Oh, that guy,” Kai cut her off. “We took care of him already.”  
Gluten blinked. “What?”  
“Well,” Ariella said slowly. “We figured you’d come back here, and then we followed all the scorch marks down here, and we saw you dead in the doorway. And you know how Ash gets gung-ho about big monsters…”  
“Yeeeah, sorry about that,” Ash said sheepishly. “I know we had a whole battle plan and everything…”  
“No,” Gluten gasped. “No no no no no no. You guys weren’t supposed to be here.”  
“What do you mean?” Kai asked, rolling her eyes. “We’re the Warriors of Light, and that’s very clearly a Crystal. It’s kind of our job to restore it, and we kind of can’t do that if we’re not here.”  
“You don’t get it!” Gluten snapped. “That thing killed my village. I was supposed to kill it! This was my fight, not yours!”  
“You actual bag of peabrains,” Kai snapped back. “What made you think you could take on an entire-ass, Crystal-fed monster by yourself? Ye [AHEM LANGUAGE] idiot, I can’t even say you could’ve died, because you did die!”  
“Put more delicately,” Ash said, clapping an hand over Kai’s mouth, “This isn’t just your fight. The Crystals chose four Warriors of Light for a reason. I know you wanted to avenge your home alone, but that’s impossible. You’re one person, Gluten. You can’t save the world, or even avenge it, by yourself.”  
Gluten felt as if she’d been slapped across the face. She scoffed. “I want out, then.”  
Ash blinked. “What do you mean, you want out?”  
“Gluten,” Ariella hissed. “You can’t just say that.”  
“I can’t be a hero,” Gluten sniffled. “I can’t even take on one monster by myself. I can’t avenge my village by myself. I couldn’t even save my own village from destruction, much less Melmond and the rest of the world.”  
“Gluten, that’s not what we meant,” Kai groaned. “You’re twisting everything!”  
“Then what do you mean?” Gluten snapped.  
Kai threw up her hands and turned around. “I’m done talking to you.”  
Ariella massaged her temples. “Are we really having this argument right now?”  
Gluten’s crystal lay on the floor next to her, glowing like a star. Gluten reached for it and held it up. “When I found out that this wasn’t just an ordinary rock, I seriously thought it meant something. Maybe I could finally put everything and everyone to rest. Maybe stop the same thing from happening to Melmond.”  
Ash looked at her, pained. “Gluten.”  
“I seriously thought it was the Crystal saying I was going to get to do something,” Gluten continued. “Ever since then it’s been Warriors of Light, restore the Crystals, save the world and whatnot. Well [CENSORED] that!”  
She hurled the crystal as hard as she could at the Crystal. Ariella dodged out of the way and scowled. “Whoa, hey.”  
“[CENSORED] this Warriors of Light bullshit!” Gluten yelled and forced herself to stand and limp for the door. “The Crystal never meant for anything to happen. Why bother anymore?”  
Before her hand even touched the door, the room behind her was suddenly flooded with golden light. Ash, Kai, and Ariella all hissed and muttered about the sudden brightness. Then, Gluten felt the floor beneath her feet go soft. Vines began growing on and around the door, colorful flowers bursting into bloom everywhere. Bewildered, she turned around.  
The Crystal was shining brighter than the sun. From the pedestal, thick moss had flooded over to carpet the floor, and vines ran up the walls to cover the stalactites. Flowers bloomed, wilted, and swelled into ripe fruits within seconds, then dropped softly to the ground. Mushrooms sprouted across the floor and all over the stalagmites, their earthy smell mixing with the perfume of the rapidly ripening fruits.  
Ash looked around, impressed, then grinned at Gluten. “What were you saying about this Warriors of Light bullshit?”  
Gluten responded by bursting into tears.

“You know there was a teleportal right behind the Crystal, right?” Ariella asked. “We could’ve gone with Ash and Kai instead of taking the long way.”  
“I know,” Gluten said. “There’s something I want to check, though.”  
The cavern was nearly empty of monsters. Once or twice they had come across a troll or a flock of cockatrices tangled up and choked by the vines, but otherwise they hadn’t seen so much as a spider.  
Gluten glanced over at Ariella and rubbed her face in embarrassment. “About what I said last night… I’m sorry. That was probably a low blow.”  
Ariella shrugged. “It’s fine. I know it’s an irrational thing for me to be scared of undead, especially with me knowing the Dia line. I’m perfectly safe.”  
She gave a quick smile, then the two fell back into silence.  
They climbed quietly, grabbing fruits and mushrooms and stuffing them into their pockets as they went. They were about halfway through the second floor when Ariella stopped. “Hey, your friend’s gone.”  
Gluten turned around and ran down the tunnel to look.  
Cereas’s skeleton was gone. In its place was a sapling, sporting a few tiny white blooms the Gluten recognized as apple blossoms. One of the roots wound out of the ground, clasping tightly to the handle of the rusted broadsword, the blade buried half in the moss.


	12. Onward to the Lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gluten’s baggage sorted and the Earth Crystal restored, the party continue onward to find Lukahn and have the project properly explained. However, Ariella has some skeletons of her own in the closet that nobody could’ve suspected.

Ariella blinked the stars out of her eyes and made a weak, giggly attempt to push away the huge tankard of beer that was offered to her. “Noooo, I can’t drink anymore!”  
“Nonsense,” Kai slurred over her own empty tankard and waved it at the nearest person. “It’s a special occasion! We should party more.”  
Ash sighed and yanked the tankard out of Kai’s hand, dumping the rest of the contents into Gluten’s. “I think that’s enough partying for you. Gluten, help her out.”  
Gluten dejectedly chugged the whole tankard and slammed it down on the table with a long, loud burp. “Don’t mind me, my liver is clearly invincible.”  
The entirety of Melmond was staying up late and livelier than Ariella had ever thought she would see it, despite everyone still tiring easily from chronic hunger. There was definitely cause for celebration, though. The grass had come back to life, the previously dry fields had miraculously sprouted tiny buds, and the stew made from the mushrooms and fruits that she and Gluten had gathered from the Cavern of Earth had filled everyone up for the first time in years. A former brewer had responded by lugging out barrel after barrel of wine and beer, and the stew gathering had turned into a full out party.  
“They look lively right now,” Gluten mused. “That’s good. Melmond had it a bit easier than my village did, but they still took a huge hit. They’ll need to relearn agriculture to an extent, and then expand a lot to be able to make up for the demand the Village of Earth used to help with.”  
“At least they have somewhere to start,” Ash pointed out, now sneaking Ariella’s leftover beer into Gluten’s tankard. “Thank the Crystals the earth bounced back as fast as it did. I can’t imagine if it really was a slow process of recovery.”  
“Keep in mind,” Ariella garbled, “You’re taking almost fifteen years of energy and releasing it all at once. And then keep in mind, this is the Earth Crystal of all energy sources. The energy must’ve gone boom.” She floppily mimed an explosion and giggled. “Earthaga… no no, more like Earthaja.”  
Kai burst out laughing. “No no no, even bigger. Earthajajaja!”  
“There’s no such thing!” Ariella giggled.  
Gluten snickered. “How many ja’s are you going to tag onto that?”  
Ash clapped. “Okay, okay! Can you three sober up for two minutes, please? We have something we really need to discuss.”  
Gluten sighed and turned to look at her boredly. Ariella pouted in an attempt to look serious. Kai pursed her lips for all of two seconds, then sputtered. “Earthajajaja.”  
Ash turned to glare at her, and she instantly settled down. “Sorry.”  
Ash sighed. “Thank you. Now, super important. About the Crystals.”  
“Yes, Ash, they’re very, very shiny,” Kai slurred, then teared up. “Aw, are you becoming the distinguished thief I taught you to be? My baby girl is growing up!”  
“Far from it,” Ash deadpanned.  
“Then what?” Ariella asked.  
“There’s something that’s been bothering me about the Crystals since we set out,” Ash explained. “We were told to restore the Crystals, but we were never told exactly where they were or how to restore them. The prophecy was really vague on everything except our purpose as the Warriors of Light.”  
“That’s what’s been bothering you?” Kai mumbled, her voice cracking. “I kind of figured we would figure it out as we go.”  
“How do you just leave it at that?” Ash asked. “Restoring the Crystals is the most important part of what we need to do. Heck, it’s the whole prophecy! ‘When darkness veils the world, the four Warriors of Light shall come--’”  
“Something about if we don’t find the shards of light, the world’s going to end,” Kai rushed. “Yes, I know. And then I said, ‘So basically we have to restore the Crystals,’ to sum it up. Pretty simple.”  
Ash blinked. “So you’re really not bothered by the fact that we have to figure out how to do our own job?”  
Kai shook her head. “Not really.”  
Ash looked to Gluten for help. “What about you? That’s kind of important, right?”  
“I mean,” Gluten said hesitantly, “I was in the boat of pawning off my crystal and living a normal, not-Warrior of Light life until maybe last night, so…”  
Ash sighed in exasperation and turned to Ariella. “Ari? Please? Tell me Crystal restoration was a priority for you?”  
“I was trying to keep you three and myself alive,” Ariella grumbled and almost stuck her hand into her tankard feeling for the handle. “You think I had enough brain cells for anything else?”  
Ash groaned. “All three of you are completely useless right now.”  
“But!”  
Kai stuck a finger straight in the air. “I did notice something cool back in the Tavern of Earth.”  
Ash sighed. “Cavern, but continue.”  
Kai cleared her throat. “Glutes chucked her tiny crystal and said the [AHEM LANGUAGE] word, and then the big Crystal lit up and cast Earthajajaja.”  
Gluten tipped her head in thought. “You’re not wrong.”  
“So what, then?” Ariella asked. “Should we hurl our crystals at the Crystals every time we find one and yell [EXCUSE THE FRENCH] at the top of our lungs now?”  
“I highly doubt it was the cursing that did anything,” Ash said. “But now that you mention it… the Earth Crystal did light up when Gluten’s small crystal hit it. Maybe that’s the key to restoring the Crystals.”  
“Oh!” Ariella exclaimed. “Like a Crystal key! So we’re unlocking the Crystals’ powers again.”  
“That’s a good way to think of it,” Gluten agreed. “Our small crystals are keys to the big Crystals.”  
“It’s like unlocking a chest,” Kai gasped. “And when you unlock it, it goes Earthajajaja!”  
Ash groaned and put her head in her hands. “I’m never again having a conversation about the Crystals with you in particular, Kai, while you’re drunk.”  
“Anyway.” She recentered herself and cleared her throat. “Now that we’ve taken care of our first Crystal, we should really start heading for Crescent Lake. We need to hear more about this prophecy and what being the Warriors of Light entails.”  
Gluten groaned and banged her head on the table. “I don’t want to hike or sail though!”  
“Well too bad,” Ash grumbled. “Unless you know how to fly, those are our only two options.”  
“But it’s so faaaaar,” Kai whined and fell sideways into Ash’s lap. “I have to drive us the entire way…”  
Ash sighed and forcefully propped her back up. “You’re not driving the ship right now, stupid.”  
Kai’s head flopped backwards and she let out a snort.  
“But even if we get there,” Ariella slurred, “There’s a big bad volcano and it explodes sometimes and goes big boom and one time it even covered a whole village…”  
She trailed off and stared moodily into her tankard.  
Ash sighed and reached for everyone’s tankards. “Alright, I think that’s enough for all of you.”  
Ariella whined. “But my beer…”  
Gluten snatched hers away from Ash. “No. Mine.”  
“Oh, come on,” Ash grumbled and made another grab at the tankard. Gluten leapt off the bench and took off towards another corner of the town, power chugging the contents of her tankard as she ran. Ash shouted and stumbled after her. “Oi! I thought you didn’t want any more!”  
Without Ash to prop her up, Kai flopped over onto the bench and mumbled a little. “Earthajajaja…”  
Ariella sighed and propped her chin on the table. “Why do we have to go to Crescent Lake next? Couldn’t there have been another side thing that turns into a Crystal?”  
She let her head fall over and she whimpered a little. “On the other hand, I thought I was ready to go back…”  
“Go back where?”  
Ariella shrieked loud enough to make everyone stop chattering and turn around to see what happened. Gluten had caught herself on the table behind Ariella, a newly refilled tankard splashing over her other hand as she stared at Ariella in fright. “Crystals, it’s just me!”  
“Don’t do that!” squeaked Ariella and flopped back onto the table.  
Gluten blinked and slowly readjusted herself on the bench. “Um… sorry?”  
She took a slurp from her tankard and smacked her lips approvingly. “But seriously, though. Go back to where? Crescent Lake?”  
Ariella nodded.  
Gluten took another slurp. “How come?”  
“My family lives there,” Ariella mumbled. “Or what’s left of it, anyway.”  
“What’s wrong with your family?” Gluten asked. “Are they evil mages? Did they do bad things? Did you have a deep, dark secret that got outed to them and they were insanely unaccepting so you had to run away or they’d kill you?”  
Ariella shook her head. “No no, nothing like that.”  
“Then what? They can’t be that bad if they were none of those things, right?”  
“I made a big mistake,” Ariella mumbled. “And I hurt a lot of people. And now nobody wants to talk to me.”  
Gluten frowned and threw an arm around Ariella. “They can’t be that mad. Even if you messed up big time, they’re still your family. They probably still love you. Maybe when we get there, they’ll be more than happy to see you again. I’m sure my family would be if they were still here.”  
She sniffled, then started bawling. “Mom, Dad, Pyrenus… I miss you… Peanut too… Soya not so much because you were mean but still a lot…”  
Ash stomped back to the table, trailed by a man in a powdered blonde wig, and clapped her hands over her ears. “Someone please get this drunk chatterbox away from me.”  
“But you must understand!” the man exclaimed. “I am the great Doctor Unne! I’ve traveled the world and studied all subjects. Whether you wish to know about the Sky People, the fairies, the medicinal uses of Mount Gulg’s volcanic ash, the ways pirates have contributed to global economics in the time of darkness, there is nothing that I, the great Doctor Unne, don’t know!”  
“I’ve literally never heard of you,” Ash grumbled. “Please leave me alone.”  
Dr. Unne gasped dramatically. “What?! You’ve never heard of me?”  
“Me neither,” Ariella added sheepishly. “Sorry.”  
Dr. Unne’s gasp increased in intensity. “No! This cannot be! You, miss!” He turned to Gluten desperately. “You must’ve heard of me, correct? You hail from the fabled Village of Earth, just a few miles south!”  
Gluten shook her head and wiped her eyes. “What’s a Doctor Unne and can I eat it?”  
Dr. Unne feigned dramatic fainting and twirled until he had collapsed in a pile on the ground. “No, this cannot be! My grand reputation…”  
Ash stood up and stepped around him to grab Kai, who was snoring away happily on the bench. “Gluten, help me with this.”  
They left Dr. Unne sitting in a growing puddle of his own tears and Gluten’s leftover beer spilling off the table as they hauled Kai back to the inn.

“This is why you don’t drink so much!” Ash yelled from the steering wheel at the three figures draped over the sides of the ship, gagging loudly. “You realize this is only easy when it’s just Gluten throwing up, right?”  
“Don’t talk to me right now,” Kai gasped and let loose another round of vomit. “Your voice is so loud.”  
“It’s so bright,” Ariella moaned and pulled her hood more firmly over her eyes to settle the spots flying around her vision. Her head pounded so hard that she was rocking more from the ocean waves rocking the actual ship.  
“I’m not hungover,” Gluten managed to chirp and threw a floppy hand in the air. “Just seasick, as usual.”  
“Drink a potion or something!” Ash said, exasperated.  
“We don’t have any more,” Ariella reminded her. “You and Kai drank all of them after we fought Lich, remember?”  
Gluten propped herself up and wiped her mouth. “How was that fight, by the way? I was kind of dead for most of it, unfortunately.”  
“No thanks to who?” Kai snapped. “It was fine. We had some issues with him blasting us with ice and lightning at us and paralyzing Ash all the time, but other than that, nothing a little holy light could’ve fixed.”  
Ariella could feel Kai’s eyes burning into her shoulder. She shrank deeper into her robes.  
“What do you mean, ‘could’ve?’” Gluten asked.  
“Ariella nearly passed out when she first saw Lich,” Kai grumbled. “Just like with the vampire, but ten times worse.”  
“It was a giant skeleton,” Ariella hissed. “What did you want me to do?”  
“I don’t know,” Kai shot back. “Fight it? Light it up? Gluten was so pumped up she literally ran herself to death to fight him.”  
Gluten groaned. “Promise me we’ll never speak of that embarrassing incident ever again.”  
“Would this be a good time to remind you that Gluten was dead-set on revenge and tunnel-visioning?” Ariella grumbled. “Unfortunately for you, I don’t feel a particularly great desire to run after every single undead on the face of the earth.”  
“Unfortunately for all of you, I don’t feel a particularly great desire to let you drink yourselves under the table again if you’re going to be nasty to each other when hungover,” Ash snapped. “One more word about who did what in a past fight and I’m throwing all three of your drunk asses overboard.”  
“Says the one who ran off after a super gremlin and got half the party killed,” Kai groaned.  
Ash growled. “Do you actually have a death wish, Kai?”  
“Please leave me out of this,” Gluten said. “I’m just seasick.”  
Everyone grumbled, but eventually settled back down.  
“Can we stop by Elfheim when we pass by?” Ariella asked after a safe period of quiet. “We really need to restock our supplies.”  
Ash nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine.”  
Ariella’s stomach had settled by the time they pulled into the dock enough for her to wobble down the ladder by herself. She slowly lowered herself into the grass and sighed. “This is much better.”  
“Kai, can you and Ariella still walk?” Ash asked somewhere off to the side. “This dock’s a little closer than the one up north, but it’s still a bit of a hike.”  
Kai gasped and grabbed onto the ladder. “Just give me a second.”  
Gluten slithered over her onto the dock, gave one final retch over the side, then wiped her mouth and straightened up. “Amateurs.”  
Ash inhaled deeply and held her breath until her face turned red. “Gluten, help Ariella up please.”  
They made slow progress through the woods, moaning and groaning. Ariella practically crawled behind everyone else, gasping for breath between the waves of her pounding headache.  
By some miracle, they didn’t run into any monsters the entire way, but by the time they reached the gates of Elfheim even Ash was winded. Gluten threw herself over a fence and wheezed. “Can we please just get a teleport spell or something?”  
“You’re the one learning it,” Ariella gasped and held her knees to keep from falling over. “Not me.”  
“We should stop by the item shop first,” Ash sighed, shaking her head at Kai slumped on the ground. “This is ridiculous.”  
“You guys can do that,” Gluten called over her shoulder and pushed herself. “I’m going to the magic shop.”  
“Don’t buy anything crazy!” Ash shouted after her, but she had already shuffled out of sight. “Ah, well. We have enough, right?”  
Ariella shrugged. “Probably. We don’t need much, anyway. Just enough to get us to Crescent Lake.”  
Ash nodded and housed Kai off the ground. “Let’s get going, then.”  
Ariella followed close behind them, squashing the strange feeling that was mixing with her hangover and making it worse.

The feeling became almost suffocating as they pulled out of the dock again, even after Ariella had downed two potions.  
“You look sicker than me,” Gluten sighed and patted Ariella’s arm, then promptly threw up over the side of the ship. “Are you sure you’re okay?”  
Ariella shook her head. “I can’t breathe.”  
Gluten wiped her mouth and frowned. “Is it the nerves?”  
“What?” Ariella scoffed. “No, what would I even be nervous about?”  
“Family,” Gluten suggested. “You mentioned you still had some family living in Crescent Lake. And a lot of people you hurt.”  
Ariella grumbled. “I can’t believe I told you about that.”  
Gluten shrugs. “Alcohol. Brings out everything.”  
She turned serious. “Even if you did hurt your family, though, they’ll be glad to see you safe if anything. Then you can tell them all about how you’re growing and becoming a better person, and how you’ll be the best person by the time you come back from saving the world.”  
She rested her chin on the railing and sighed.  
Ariella frowned. “But what if they aren’t happy to see me?”  
“Trust me,” Gluten said, “they’ll still be mad at first. You can’t just forget the thing. But their love for you, and them seeing you alive and safe, those things should beat out every other feeling.”  
She suddenly turned green and bent over the railing again. “Now excuse me while I vomit up my stomach lining.”  
Ariella sighed and reached over to rub Gluten’s back. “But what if they don’t? What if they actually hate me?”  
“Trust me, they won’t,” Gluten gargled. “It’s been a few months since you’ve seen them. If they’re your family, they won’t hate you unless you’re actually evil.”  
Ariella nodded and settled back onto the railing, her stomach still turning over.

Despite all of Gluten’s reassurance, the feeling got worse than before as they turned around the shoreline and a small dock came into sight.  
Kai sighed in relief. “Finally! We’re almost there, right?”  
“Still should be some hiking,” Ariella mumbled. “Crescent Lake is more inland.”  
“Doesn’t sound too bad,” Kai said. “We can walk off our sea legs a little bit before visiting the sages. I’m not keen on being wobbly the first time we meet them.”  
“A literal repeat of the king,” Gluten snickered. “We were a mess back then.”  
Ash sighed and rolled her eyes. “We’re still a mess now.”  
Ariella didn’t even notice they’d scraped into the dock until all three of the others were shouting at her from the bottom of the ladder. She quickly scrambled down the ladder, catching her foot about a yard from the bottom. Ash caught her back before she could tumble the rest of the way down. “Are you okay?”  
“Yeah.” Ariella nodded vigorously and tried to shake her foot loose. “Yeah. Totally fine. Nothing wrong here.”  
“I don’t know,” Kai said. “You’ve been kind of quiet even after we took care of the hangovers. You feeling okay?”  
“Yes,” Ariella replied while Ash helped untangle her foot. “I’m perfectly fine. Literally nothing wrong here.”  
“You don’t seem fine,” Ash said. “Seriously, just tell us. Is something wrong?”  
“No, nothing is wrong!” Ariella insisted. “Why are you two so worried all of a sudden?”  
“Because the last time someone felt off and we didn’t ask, Gluten went on a suicide run through a dungeon and literally died,” Kai said.  
Gluten scowled. “I thought we weren’t going to bring that up anymore.”  
“That’s not going to happen,” Ariella assured her. “I’m perfectly fine. Just still a little sick. I will be fine.”  
Ash and Kai both opened their mouths to speak, and Gluten clapped a hand over both of them. “Okay, cool. Good to know. If you need anything though, just give us a heads up or something. Potion, phoenix down, an embarrassing childhood story to make you feel better. Anything at all.”  
She turned to Ash and flopped over. “I’m still seasick and my feet hurt. Please let me piggyback.”  
Ash sighed and hoisted her over her shoulder. “Alright then. Let’s get going before the sun goes down.”  
She’d barely taken a step forward when a giant snake shot out of the ground and attached itself to her knee. She shrieked and flung Gluten into the air in her scramble to kick it off. “Help me!”  
“[AHEM LANGUAGE],” hissed Kai and drew her knife. “Hold still!”  
Ariella lunged forward to hold Ash’s foot in place, nearly getting kicked in the face. Ash beat at the snake’s head wildly with one hand and swatted with the other at its body starting to coil around her other leg. “Get it off! Get it off!”  
“Hold still!” Kai grumbled and wedged her knife under the snake’s upper jaw. “I can’t pull it off if you keep moving.”  
“Blizzara!”  
Kai leapt back as a ball of icicles sprang out of the snake’s head and Ash’s knee. The snake’s top jaw flew through the air, spraying fluids everywhere until it bounced and disappeared somewhere in the grass. Gluten hobbled over and yanked the rest of the snake out of Ash’s knee and tossed it to the side. “Problem solved.”  
“What was that?” Ash chattered.  
“Anaconda,” Ariella said. “Basically giant, buff cobras. Here, antidote.”  
Ash nodded quickly and practically chugged the restorative.  
Kai whistled. “Now I’m starting to feel nervous about this area.”  
“No time for that,” Gluten said briskly. “We should get walking.”  
She awkwardly marched past everyone, holding her back and wincing. Kai raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were seasick and your feet hurt?”  
Gluten waved behind her. “Adrenaline does wonders for nausea.”  
They easily avoided the few trolls and hill gigases they were unlucky to run into, but the closer to the lake they got, the more Ariella felt her stomach and lungs constricting. Everything reached a limit the second she spotted the glimmer of the lake’s surface, and she stumbled to huddle next to a tree. “I can’t go in.”  
“Why not?” Kai asked. “You practically lived here your whole life, didn’t you? What’s there to be afraid of, besides the giant snakes?”  
“You don’t understand.” Ariella shook her head, reminding herself not to hyperventilate. “I left people there that don’t want to see me.”  
Gluten frowned and knelt next to her. “Ari, we went over this on the ship.”  
“I know but they have to hate me,” Ariella practically squeaked. “I made a huge mistake. I shouldn’t have come back.”  
Gluten nodded and turned around. “You two go in first. I’ll stay here with her until she calms down.”  
Kai shook her head. “No way. The town is literally right there. Wouldn’t it be safer to have a panic attack over there?”  
“You clearly don’t know how panic attacks work,” Gluten said. “The town is what’s making her panic. I don’t think it’s a good idea to force her in.” She turned to Ariella. “Okay, I’ve been trying not to pry further than you did a huge oops, but exactly why are you so scared of coming back to Crescent Lake? Was what you did really that bad?”  
“She killed people.”  
Kai, Ash, and Gluten whirled around. Behind them stood a sturdy-built, brown-haired woman. She glared at them, arms crossed, and Ariella felt a new wave of dread washing over her. “Abby.”  
“Wait, who?” Kai asked. “Who are you? What do you mean Ariella killed people? I can’t really say she wouldn’t hurt a fly, but she’d definitely stop long short of killing people.”  
The woman scoffed. “Oh, you’d be surprised. She convinced a village not to move out of a dangerous area, with people falling ill left and right--”  
“Abby,” Ariella choked out, “stop it.”  
“--made a potion that she promised would cure everyone--”  
“Abby,” Ariella pleaded, “you know that’s not what I meant to do.”  
“--and instead,” Abby snarled, “it left them hanging in the horrible, horrible limbo between life and death, and the rest of us had to run for our lives. Now, with that in mind, Ariella, exactly what do you think you’re doing, coming back here?”


End file.
